Guide to the output of the builtin airport command line utility

airportcommand lineNetworkterminal

I am trying to understand the output of the airport command line utility on OSX:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I
     agrCtlRSSI: -45
     agrExtRSSI: 0
    agrCtlNoise: -95
    agrExtNoise: 0
          state: running
        op mode: station 
     lastTxRate: 585
        maxRate: 867
lastAssocStatus: 0
    802.11 auth: open
      link auth: wpa2-psk
          BSSID: xx:xx
           SSID: xx
            MCS: 7
        channel: 44,80

While I'd to love how to understand all of the output above, most specifically, I am trying to figure out if there is any way to programmatically get the "Link Speed" as shown in the Network Utility program:

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Best Answer

There’s not much documentation available, but these are the basics:

  • agrCtlRSSI - Signal strength. The higher, the better.
  • agrCtlNoise - Noise level. The lower the better.
  • state - operating state (running or not)
  • op mode - station or repeater
  • lastTxRate - last rate of transmission speed
  • maxRate 867 - maximum transmission rate
  • 802.11 auth - authentication type (open, shared, EAP, etc.)
  • link auth: - encryption (WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc)
  • BSSID - Basic Service Set Identifier (usually the MAC address of the WAP)
  • SSID - Service Set Identifier (name of your WiFi network)

I am trying to figure out if there is any way to programmatically get the "Link Speed"

The item that you’d be looking for is “lastTxRate”. So, to get that, you can issue the command

$ airport -I | grep lastTxRate
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