Idly looking at local access points at a client’s pub - and it’s VERY busy! Am I correct in saying that the first one in the list with channel 5240/20-eeeC means that it’s using 5240 as the control channel and then going left down the channels. So it’s using 5250-5170?
Yes it is.
You also see multiple SSID’s coming from the same AP (last part of MAC address is the same).(Some will increment the last part for secondary SSID’s)
There is overlap with the 5180-Ceee and with 5200-eCee, 5220-eeCe. Same frequencies for the 80MHz but different conrol channels.
Clear channel check will work in “ac”, but is more complex than with the same control channel.
Extra SSID will send extra beacons (at 6Mbps each SSID takes 0.5% of the channel for beacons)
But it is not known here, from that scan, how “busy” this environment is.
“Snooper” might give you more info on the amount of traffic per SSID/BSSID (BSSID=MAC) (“Freq Usage” is also an option to check, for busy channels)
You also see multiple SSID’s coming from the same AP
Yeah I noticed that and wondered why? Especially as they appear to have a blank SSID. Is this what inSSIDer shows as “Hidden network”? Wondered about that as well.
Having multiple SSID on an AP is common practice to separate or categorise users. Blank SSID in the beacon is indeed what comes when the SSID is set “hidden”.
Some use this as security mechanism (the intruder does not know the SSID to connect to). Here they seem to be so confident that they even use “open” SSID networks (A , not AP)
Not a safe way to make a wifi network secure. https://www.acrylicwifi.com/en/blog/hidden-ssid-wifi-how-to-know-name-of-network-without-ssid/