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Asked: 2026-05-11T14:44:36+00:00

I would like to be able to get the speed of the wireless interface

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I would like to be able to get the speed of the wireless interface under Mac OS X. I have a perl script that gets the other information for the wireless card but I still need to get the connection speed.

For the moment I have statically set the airport speed with: $airport_rate = ’54’; (see code below).

What command could I use to get the speed of the built in airport card or what am I missing in my code below. Thanks

EDIT: This code now works. Thanks. Sample output for the script:

ETHERNET IP    : 192.168.2.7 AIRPORT  IP    : 192.168.2.4 AIRPORT STATUS : CONNECTED         SSID   : Forcefield         RATE   : 54 Mb/s 
#!/usr/bin/perl                                                                                                          # a little script to get your network status                                                                              $en0_info = `ifconfig en0 | grep 'inet' | grep -v 127.0.0.1`; $en1_info = `ifconfig en1 | grep 'inet' | grep -v 127.0.0.1`; $airport_info = `/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I`;  if($en0_info) {     $en0_info =~ /inet (.*) netmask/s;     $output .= 'ETHERNET IP    : $1\n'; } else { $output .= 'ETHERNET IP    : INACTIVE\n'; }  if($en1_info) {     $en1_info =~ /inet (.*) netmask/s;     $en1_info = $1;     $airport_info =~ /lastTxRate: (\d\d\d)/s;     $airport_rate = $1;     $airport_info =~ /BSSID(.*?)SSID: (.*?)\n/s;     $airport_SSID = $2;     $output .= 'AIRPORT  IP    : $en1_info\n';     $output .= 'AIRPORT STATUS : CONNECTED\n';     $output .= '        SSID   : $airport_SSID\n';     $output .= '        RATE   : $airport_rate Mb/s\n'; } else {     $output .= 'AIRPORT STATUS : INACTIVE\n'; }  print '$output';
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1 Answer

  1. I was surprised to discover this is non-trivial. However, a quick application of Yahoo! Search found a pointer to the ‘airport’ command line script, which looks like it’ll give you the answers you want. See http://osxdaily.com/2007/01/18/airport-the-little-known-command-line-wireless-utility/

    In a nutshell, /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I will give you what you seek. And it doesn’t appear to require root privs, either.

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