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Tonic Release Notes Print Friendly and PDF

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Joel Crane
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Tonic 1.5 (May 24, 2023)

This update introduces the “Assessment Page,” which is a dashboard that highlights many of the things Tonic sees in the capture. 

New Features

  • Assessment Page. This is a real-time or post-capture dashboard. It's designed to help you know where to navigate within the application, live or recorded. The thresholds pane will auto select the strongest radio and display the client count and channel utilization of it. The Client distribution is just meant to help you visualize where your clients have landed and how much the utilization is.
  • Back Button. I don't know about you but I was getting sick of forgetting how I ended up where I was. The back button is 
  • Wi-Spy spectrum data playback.  We did it! You now have a tool that does packet capture and spectrum analyzer.
  • Improved capture load times. Loading a capture takes half the time. We still have some improvements to do here, but we think you’ll appreciate the faster load times.
  • Capture Playback for Non-Subscribers. Tonic will open the first 5 minutes of any compatible capture for anyone with a my.metageek.com account (similar to inSSIDer). 


Tonic 1.4.0.1 (February 2, 2023)

Block off your afternoon, you're going to love this update! There's just so much packed in here.

New Features

  •  We've rearranged the user interface to maximize space and to help you get more out of the time graphs. As one of our beta users stated, 'I love the new layout. It's great with packing in information on each level as you drill down. The arrangement of the Clients Table, TreePie, Radio Details, and Time Graphs is all exactly right.'
  •  If you plug in a Wi-Spy, you'll see a spectrum waterfall view and the current trace
  • We've added the ability to track channel airtime over a period of time using box and whisker plots. They'll turn red when channel business crosses a threshold!
  • Channel selection is much easier and we're giving you some shortcuts. We'll also remember your last selection.
  • Authentication events are much smarter. We look at a lot of frames and call out the reasons why a device failed.
  • We recognize EAP! Enterprise users rejoice!
  • Client follow has been improved to scan channels in 11k neighbor reports with higher frequency.
  • In the client details page, we'll show the overall Access Point signal strength over time. It's delightfully good with client follow.
  • You can now leave Tonic running and it will continuously capture in 1 hour blocks.

Bug Fixes

  •  We had some bugs with opening captures. Those have been resolved.
  •  There was a bug with client follow, and the time graphs changing order.
  •  There have been some bug with removing adapters in the middle of the capture.

Tonic 1.3.1 (January 4, 2022)

We've fixed a few things related to the last release. They're small but they're important!

  • Send to Wireshark and Eye PA works as expected
  • Users can now omit 2.4 GHz channel scanning
  • Resolved some of the client table usability issues.

Tonic 1.3 (November 21, 2022)

  • Tonic now allows users to omit certain channels for being scanned. They can select these in the menu navigation “Tools > Channels Scanned”
  • Tonic now captures Signal-to-Noise-Ratio values reported from endpoint devices back to the Access Points. This is a very useful metric for evaluating the health of wireless devices. This value is extracted from action frames, and may not be present for every client device.
  • Tonic will now display roaming events and identify the new BSSID the device has roamed to. It will also display disassociation and deauthentication codes in the 
  • Tonic now can anonymize mac addresses and SSIDs. Caveat: Anonymization to remove 802.1X authentication details from a data payload is planned but not part of this release.
  • We’ve fixed a handful of bugs to make the application a much better experience.

Tonic 1.2 (July 13, 2022)

  • Tonic now supports Client Following! If you have more than one Packet Capture Adapter, and if you drill down to a client, Tonic will use the second and third adapters to watch for the client on different channels. If the client roams to an AP on another channel, the primary adapter will switch channels to follow the client. It's unlikely that Tonic will catch the roam itself, but it will publish a roaming event to the Events list.
  • This release also introduces the Capture Channel graph, which shows a history of what channels your packet capture adapters were capturing on! If the bar graph shows a barber pole pattern, that means that the adapter was performing channel sweeping.
  • In the Packet Flow popup, Tonic now displays different decodes based on the frame type. For example, Probe Requests now show the SSID.
  • Associations are great, but Reassociations are even better, so we added a Reassociation event!
    And sometimes there are Disassociations too :(
  • AP Radio Details pane now has a QBSS Utilization bar chart and the Additional Capabilities section has been enhanced to show Protected Management Frames, Fast Roaming, and Neighbor Reports capabilities.
  • Some of the time-series graphs had slightly ambiguous names, so we fixed them. For example, Client MCS is now Client Tx MCS, so it's obvious where that MCS Index is coming from.
  • We unified the button styling in Tonic, so everything looks much more consistent.
  • You probably won't notice anything, but in the code, we cleaned up the text styling to make future additions and improvements easier.
  • Weirdly, the Anonymous Usage Statistics menu option was appearing twice. Not anymore!
  • In some cases, Tonic would crash on launch. That seemed bad, so we decided to fix it.
    If [HIDDEN] SSIDs are annoying you, now you can hide the [HIDDEN] SSIDS completely :)

Tonic 1.1 (Apr 25, 2022)

There's a lot going on in this release, so we're going to split up the notes a bit!

New Features

  • We built a brand new "Start Screen" for Tonic! It's similar to the old one, but has a nicer layout, tells you more about the status of connected packet capture adapters, and gives you the option to open a PCAP file.
  • Additionally, we implemented an animation in the background of the Start Screen! It has something to do with toast. If you know why, Tweet us at @MetaGeek! If you enjoy toast, read on to find our other toasty release notes.
  • In the BSSID View, in the Airtime Graph, we now show a time slice for Broadcast! Now you can see how much time is consumed by broadcast traffic, such as Beacons.
  • You've probably noticed that when you hover your mouse over the multi-layer pie charts, a tooltip appears! In the tooltip, we used to show a small "color swatch" that matched the slice and layer of the chart that the mouse was hovering over. We've replaced the generic swatch with icons, depending on what the slice represents! Packets and Packet Types get little envelopes, Broadcast gets an icon, and Clients get an icon according to their device type! If we don't know the client device type, then we just show a generic client icon. That wraps up the "envelopification" of Tonic!
  • Tonic had several different ways of displaying notifications, so we consolidated everything into one central framework! Notifications all appear in the same place now (across the top), have the same styling, support built-in buttons, and can be different colors. Fun fact: Internally, we call these notifications "Toasts". I mean, who doesn't love toast?! Speaking of toast, we recommend trying some "Cookie Butter" on toast sometime. It's amazing.
  • Tonic now saves pcapng files, which include details about what the capture adapters were doing during the capture, all within the capture file!
  • Additionally, Tonic can read in the capture adapter channels while it opens the pcapng file, so you can see what the adapters were doing during the capture! It's super, super neat.

Improvements

  • We've updated the font in Tonic! We think it looks pretty sharp, and we hope you like it as much as we do!
  • We fixed the style of the moveable splitters between the Networks Table and Spectrum Graphs! We fixed them! What have you done, Derek!? You've done nothing! Nothing!
  • The whole Time Graph menu felt incomplete and unfinished, because it was incomplete and unfinished. Now, it's complete and finished!
  • Tonic is now supports switching back to live data after opening a PCAP! It's also fully aware of the "state" it is in, whether looking at an opened PCAP, or viewing live data.

Bug Fixes

  • Previously, the Retry Time Graph didn't seem to work correctly. We investigated the issue, and found a difference in how we calculated our "Retry Rate" indicator in the BSSID and Client Details Panes versus our Retry Time Graph. We made them the same, which makes the Retry Time Graph feel much better. Keep in mind that the Retry Rate indicator in the BSSID and Client Detail Panes is an average over whatever timespan you have selected, so they won't track perfectly with the graph (which is by design).
  • There was a bug that caused the network "ziggurats" (yep, that's what we call them!) to not align with the spectrum or with the channel markers in the 5 GHz band. We've realigned everything, so it looks right now!
  • We replaced the confusing (and broken, lol) "Connected Rate" indicator in the Client Details pane with "Client Tx Rate" and "Client Rx Rate", so you can watch what data rates the AP and client are using in real-time.
  • Technically, it's possible to hot plug and unplug packet capture adapters while Tonic is running, but we don't recommend doing that. Still, accidents happen, and Tonic would get into a pretty bad state if all of the adapters are  disconnected. To smooth things out a bit, this update adds a notification to tell you that the last adapter has been removed, and it guides you to restart Tonic. It uses our fancy new toast system, too!
  • If your MetaGeek Account didn't have a MetaGeek Enterprise Suite subscription, and you tried to log into Tonic, it would silently return you to the login window of no indication of what went wrong! Now Tonic shows you a message, explaining that you need a MetaGeek Enterprise Suite subscription to continue. It's the small things.
  • In trial mode, you'll have the opportunity to sign into a MetaGeek Account in each subsequent launch. There's also a button to continue your free 14-day trial.
  • Some users who were either preparing to start a trial or continue a trial would find that their trial period had expired too soon. Tonic is meant to offer a fast, free, frictionless 14-day trial, so we fixed the bug that was causing the trial to end too soon. Tell all of your friends! That we... uh... fixed a bug.
  • The developers found a crash, due to how we were handling our Time Graph data trimming. They added extra error checking and exception handling, and fixed the crash! Kinda boring, but important!

1.0.3

2022-03-30

In This Release

  • We removed some leftover code from the Alpha and Beta phases that would cause Tonic to stop working on March 31st, 2022. Yeah, oops. Special thanks to our time-traveling friends in Australia, who caught this issue a day early!
  • The links that we used on the packet capture adapter troubleshooting view weren't quite right, so we fixed those.
  • The packet capture adapter troubleshooting view was appearing a little bit too soon, especially if you have more than one adapter. We adjusted the delay, so the view appears a bit later now.

Known Issues

  • If you already have Chanalyzer and/or Eye P.A. installed and activated on your system, there's a good chance that Tonic will think you've already used a 14-day trial. We added some better error messaging back in 1.0.1 to help us get to the bottom of what is happening. If you run into this, would you mind taking a screenshot of the error, and contacting MetaGeek Support? This will help us get it fixed, and we will also use the opportunity to get you set up with an account-based trial. Thanks for the help!
  • There still isn't a graceful way to stop a trial. Fortunately, Tonic is full-featured in trial mode, so it shouldn't hurt anything. We're still planning on fixing this though.
  • There's something weird going on with the Retries graph. And by something weird, we mean that it basically doesn't work. Retries are pretty important, so we'll get that fixed soon!
  • The Connected Data Rate field isn't working. We've got plans to replace it with a Client Tx Data Rate, and perhaps an AP Tx Data Rate as well.

1.0.2

2022-03-25

In This Release

  • We found the bug that would cause our driver swap to fail! It was pretty simple - we were pointing at the wrong driver directory. D'oh! This would cause Tonic to not find any supported packet capture adapters, and get stuck waiting for packets. It's fixed now, so Tonic should automatically swap in the packet capture drivers on launch, and it should swap back in the original drivers on exit. If you have any trouble with this, let us know by contacting MetaGeek Support.
  • Instead of opening up the entire PCAP file in Eye P.A., the File > Save PCAP option prompts you with a file save dialogue window, just like you'd expect.
  • But what if you want to send the PCAP to Eye P.A.!? Don't worry, we've got you covered! The File > Send PCAP to menu is now fully implemented! This option takes the entire 10-minute packet buffer, instantly saves it to the Temporary PCAP Folder with a UTC date stamp, and automagically opens it up in whatever packet analyzer you selected. It makes getting packets out of Tonic a snap!

Known Issues

  • If you already have Chanalyzer and/or Eye P.A. installed and activated on your system, there's a good chance that Tonic will think you've already used a 14-day trial. We added some better error messaging in 1.0.1 to help us get to the bottom of what is happening. If you run into this, would you mind taking a screenshot of the error, and contacting MetaGeek Support? This will help us get it fixed, and we will also use the opportunity to get you set up with an account-based trial. Thanks for the help!
  • There still isn't a graceful way to stop a trial. Fortunately, Tonic is full-featured in trial mode, so it shouldn't hurt anything. We're still planning on fixing this though.
  • There's something weird going on with the Retries graph. And by something weird, we mean that it basically doesn't work. Retries are pretty important, so we'll get that fixed soon!
  • The Connected Data Rate field isn't working. We've got plans to replace it with a Client Tx Data Rate, and perhaps an AP Tx Data Rate as well.

1.0.1

2022-03-22

In This Release

  • When Tonic starts, it looks for compatible packet capture adapters, and attempts to swap in special drivers for them. This release of Tonic adds descriptive error messages if something goes wrong, and provides instructions to help resolve the problem.
  • In the Time Graphs, there was a delay before the exact value tooltip would appear. This was totally unnecessary, so we removed it! As you mouse over the graphs, the tooltips now appear instantly.

Known Issues

  • In some cases, Tonic isn't reliably swapping in the packet capture adapter drivers on launch. As noted above, we've added helpful links to work around the issue as a temporary fix. We have also exposed some error messaging to help us get a better idea of why things aren't working.
  • If you already have Chanalyzer and/or Eye P.A. installed and activated on your system, there's a good chance that Tonic will think you've already used a 14-day trial. If you experience this issue, give our support team a shout, and we will hook you up with a 14-day trial through your MetaGeek Account.
  • There still isn't a graceful way to stop a trial. Fortunately, Tonic is full-featured in trial mode, so it shouldn't hurt anything. We're still planning on fixing this though.
  • The "Save" option in the File menu always tries to open Eye P.A., which isn't intentional. We'll make it just save, probably in the next release. And yes, we totally said that last time. You know how things go.
  • The "Send to" options in the File menu don't do anything yet, but they will very soon - the developers are actively working on it!
  • Something about the "Retries" time graph is just wrong. It's on the short list of things to take a look at!

1.0

2022-03-15

In This Release

  • Whoa, Tonic 1.0 is here! It's absolutely brand new, and we have a massive list of features to add, but we think it's ready to start using for Wi-Fi troubleshooting!
  • In the last Beta release, there was an issue where packets in the selected timespan weren't being added and removed properly, resulting in negative packet counts and airtime usage. That's all fixed now - the packet counts and airtime increment and decrement correctly!
  • The icons in the Status Pane weren't aligned and spaced properly, but they are now. We like fixing those little details, which is good, because there are more things like this to fix!

Known Issues

  • Tonic 1.0 is brand new, and bleeding edge! We're finding it to be super stable and reliable, but there are still some user interface bugs and inconsistencies here and there. There are also lots of features that we want to implement! This "1.0" release probably won't stay current for very long - we plan to continue rapid development of Tonic!
  • There still isn't a graceful way to stop a trial. Fortunately, Tonic is full-featured in trial mode, so it shouldn't hurt anything. We're still planning on fixing this though.
  • The "Save" option in the File menu always tries to open Eye P.A., which isn't intentional. We'll make it just save, most likely in the next release.
  • The "Send to" options in the File menu don't do anything yet, but they will very soon - the developers are actively working on it!
  • Something about the "Retries" time graph is just wrong. We will look into that very soon.

0.18.0.1

2022-03-10

In This Release

  • Tonic now has a 14-day trial! If you have a friend or co-worker who wants to try Tonic, they just need to grab a compatible packet capture adapter, and download the installer. That's it! Fast, frictionless... hang on, are we talking about Tonic, or captive portals?! Either way, we wanted trialing Tonic to be the opposite of using a captive portal.
  • The Channels Table has a new feature! As the PCAP adapters sweep channels, a dot will appear next to the channel that the adapter is capturing on. The color of the dot corresponds to the adapter, so you can tell which adapter is doing what. There's a similar dot in the Networks Table, but it is currently based on network activity (and isn't color-coded yet). The network activity dot will probably get some... tweaking, but we're super happy with the dot on the channels view.
  • The divider between the table and Spectrum Graph panes in the Networks View and Channels View is now moveable! The divider isn't styled yet, and we'll probably tune when a horizontal scrollbar appears in the table in a future update.
  • We added Selected Timespan Markers to the Time Graphs! They show up as vertical green lines, which mark the timespan that you have selected. If you select a 10-minute timespan (which is the maximum), they disappear (for now). We'll probably work on these more soon, but we wanted to get something basically functional out there.
  • We also fixed the formatting of the header in the Time Graphs, and froze the time markers to the top. Now, only the graphs themselves scroll vertically, so you can always see the markers.
  • The timespan mouseover marker in the Time Graphs now uses the local timezone on your machine! It will even show 24-hour time, if your machine is configured that way.
  • To keep the Selected Timespan Markers from interfering with the "move up" and "move down" buttons, we moved the "move up" and "move down" buttons to the left side of the graphs. We hope you agree that this move is a "move up" for the "move up" and "move down" buttons.
  • The Channel Airtime bar chart wasn't being drawn in the BSSID Details view for some reason. It's working now!
  • There are keyboard shortcuts for some of the menu items! Nice.
  • Not a big deal, but we organized the Help menu a bit. We also added a link to the Supported Packet Capture Adapters list, and a link to the User Guide (which we'll finish writing soon).

Known Issues

  • There isn't a graceful way to stop your trial, and sign in with a real MetaGeek Account, once you've started the trial. For now, we don't recommend testing the "Start a Trial" button, unless you really do want to start a trial.
  • The negative packets number issue that we mentioned last time is still a thing. For now, the workaround is to change the selected timespan, which causes Tonic to do a fresh packet count. We've also noticed that this can mess up airtime calculations, so keep an eye out for that if you run Tonic for awhile.
  • Something about the "Retries" time graph is just wrong. We will look into that very soon.
  • The "Save" option in the File menu always tries to open Eye P.A., which isn't intentional. We'll make it just save, most likely in the next release.
  • The "Send to" options in the File menu don't do anything yet. We'll get those implemented soon.
  • The Status Pane icons in the upper right have some alignment issues.
  • There are a lot more unimplemented or half-implemented features - we'll keep working on adding stuff!

0.17.0.1

2022-03-02

In This Release

  • In the Packet Events Table, we now display the time that the event occurred in your local timezone, instead of UTC. If your system is configured to use 24-hour time, events are displayed in 24-hour time! Nice!
  • In the Packet Events table, Packet Events that are older than 10 minutes don’t disappear anymore. Instead, they just turn grey, indicating that the event is no longer in the packet buffer. A greyed out Packet Event can't be clicked, but you can still see that it happened.
  • Additionally, the newest events in the Packet Events table are now at the top!
  • For some reason, some of the MCS columns in certain tables weren’t populated when they should have been. Ryan noticed it, and fixed it.
  • There was some leftover code that would cause “toasts” (little notification banners) to appear at the bottom of the app. We’re planning on implementing a new, unified “toast” system along the top, so we’ve removed the old toasts along the bottom for now.
  • We’ve gone plaid! When you open a PCAP file, Tonic now opens it in “Ludicrous Mode”, processing all of the packets as quickly as possible until we meet the end of the PCAP file. Opening existing PCAPs is not Tonic’s focus right now, but we do find that this is super useful for testing things, and we think you might find some uses for it as well.
  • We added a shortcut to the temporary PCAPs folder in the “Tools” menu, so you can get there quickly to find an old PCAP event, or clear out the folder to make some disk space. Right now, we have some logic here that automatically removes files from this folder every now and then. After getting some feedback about it, we are planning to remove this functionality, and let you manage the folder yourself. Until then, be careful about storing anything in there.
  • There was a small trigger in Tonic that would keep us from updating the Networks Table until the adapters had completed a complete sweep of the spectrum. We removed that trigger, so now, the Networks Table populates in almost real-time as we do the first sweep. It mostly just looks cooler.
  • The 2.4 and 5 GHz Spectrum Graph headers weren’t styled right! Now they’re styled right! Wow!
  • Speaking of the 2.4 and 5 GHz graphs, we used to use different colors for signal strength markers. We decided to use dark grey for lower signal strengths, and a lighter grey for higher signal strengths to keep things clean.
  • We fixed some styling issues around the tables in the Networks View and Channels View, and tuned up some of the default column widths.

Known Issues

  • Instead of tracking the total amount of packets it has captured, Tonic keeps track of how many packets it has within the selected timespan (like 30 seconds, or 5 minutes). This involves adding a packet when we see a new one, and removing the packet when it falls off the timespan. In some cases, things get out of sync, and we see negative packet numbers. For example, we’ll say we saw -7 packets during the last 30 seconds. Obviously, that isn’t right… we’re holding something wrong, somewhere. We’ll get it fixed soon. For now, the workaround is to change the selected timespan, which causes Tonic to do a fresh packet count.
  • The timespan mouseover marker is still in UTC. We have plans to make it use the same time and time format as the Events View.
  • Channel Airtime isn’t being drawn in the BSSID Details view for some reason. It was working before, so it’s probably an easy fix.
  • The “Save” option in the File menu always tries to open Eye P.A., which isn’t intentional. We’ll make it just save, most likely in the next release.
  • The “Send to” options in the File menu don’t do anything yet. We’ll get those implemented soon.
  • There are a lot more unimplemented or half-implemented features - we’ll keep working on adding stuff!

0.16.1.1

2022-02-22

In This Release

  • The initial public announcement of MetaGeek Tonic!
  • Released to a small group of beta testers at an open event at the Wireless LAN Professionals Conference (WLPC)
  • Watch our announcement about MetaGeek Tonic at WLPC on the Wireless LAN Professionals YouTube channel

Known Issues

  • Since this is our first release to a small group of beta testers, there are too many bugs and unfinished features to track!
  • Expect to see more specific entries to the Known Issues section as we progress through the beta