How to monitor traffic passing through my Wi-Fi access point

Question

I know how to monitor the network interfaces on my local computer with Wireshark. But, how do I monitor the traffic flowing through my wireless access point from connected computers?

It seems like this might not be possible without some kind of special software on the wireless access point itself.

Answer 1

You will have to put your wireless interface in promiscuous mode and then run Wireshark on it, that will capture all the wireless data that your interface can hear.

aircrack-ng has a utility airmon-ng which will create a monitor mode wireless interface. you can also use iwconfig/wlanconfig to put your card in monitor mode, it works for Atheros cards etc.