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I'm using Wireshark to capture traffic on my 2.4G wifi network. I'm set to promiscuous mode, but I only see traffic to or from me, or broadcast or multicast traffic. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, when I've dont this before I was able to see all traffic on the wireless lan, but now i can't. I used to not use WEP or WPA so I'm not sure if that was why I was able to view all traffic. Should I be able to see all traffic on the wireless lan? Or since it's a wireless net work does all traffic have to go through the AP so it never gets to me unless its addressed to me?

Thanks

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  • Did any answer help you? If so, you should accept the answer so that the question doesn't keep popping up forever, looking for an answer. Alternatively, you could provide and accept your own answer.
    – Ron Maupin ♦
    Aug 15, 2017 at 5:21

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You don't mention the operating system or wireless adapter, but many adapter drivers do not actually go into promiscuous mode. Some treat the adapter as an Ethernet interface.

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  • Ok. Forgot to mention I'm using windows 7 and Fedora 24, both 64 bit. Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6205 #2 network adapter on my windows machine & not sure what kind of adapter Im using on my Linux machine.
    – Frank Jay
    Nov 13, 2016 at 21:18
  • Very few windows drivers can go into promiscuous mode. The ability to use promiscuous mode is entirely dependent on the adapter driver, so I would start there on your Linux machine.
    – Ron Trunk
    Nov 13, 2016 at 22:15
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On Wi-Fi, it is called monitor mode instead of promiscuous mode. You mention that your network was open before. If so, then you would be able to read any traffic from other devices on the frequency channel you were on. Once you add encryption, each client on the Wi-Fi has a different key so you cannot decrypt other client's traffic.

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