Adapters View

The Adapters View lists and controls the adapters used as a source of network traffic in the application. If the view is not visible, show it by selecting the View > Adapters View menu item. The adapters list will be empty the first time you open the view. You need to populate this list by manually adding each adapter as needed go to Adding Adapters section for instructions.

Once the list has been populated, each adapter will be displayed in an individual control showing its channel and status represented as a colored circle, putting the mouse over the adapter icon will display a tooltip which contains the adapter’s alias, channel and vendor (see the figure below).

The status will display Unavailable if the adapter is not plugged to your computer, Detached if the adapter is plugged but not attached to the application, Available if it is attached but not in use, Running when it is being used, and Running detach if it is being used by a different instance; the table below shows the summary of this. The extended status will display additional information related to the role of the adapter in the application. For instance, the extended status of a sniffer adapter capturing packets will show the channel and protocol stack used for decoding.

Icon	Status	Color	Description
	Unavailable	Gray	Unavailable. It might not be plugged or recognized by the OS
	Detached	Brown	Available but detached from Ubiqua
	Available	Amber	Available and ready to be used
	Available detached	Amber Dimmed	Available, another instance is also attached to the adapter
	Running	Green	The adapter is running
	Running detached	Green Dimmed	Another instance is attached to the adapter and started its application
	Error	Red	An error has occurred

Adding Adapters

To add a new adapter to the list, right click inside the Adapters View and select the Add menu item, or click the Add Adapter button on the top of the Adapters View. After opening the Add Adapter dialog (see the figure below), if your adapter is compatible with Ubiqua (see Supported Sniffer Hardware for details) and was able to identify it, then your adapter will be in the Available list.

If your adapter is in the supported adapters list, but you don’t see it in the Add adapter dialog, make sure you have the correct drivers installed.

If your adapter is in the Available list, just select the adapter and click on the Select button. At this point the adapter should have been added to the adapters list, unless the adapter supports multiple applications. If that is the case, you have to select a supported application (see the figure below) and then click in the Select button.

The adapter you want to add to your adapters list, may not have been discovered by the Adapters View automatically. If that is your case, what you need to do is click on the ‘Custom’ button which will open the configuration dialog (see figure below) where you can select Connector type (UART or IP), Connector Name, and the supported application the adapter is using.

When setting up a SEWIO Open sniffer for the first time, you must configure the adapter via its web interface, additional information can be found in SEWIO Hardware.

Ubiqua doesn’t offer support for Windows 7, however you could still use it but most adapters wil need to be added though the ‘Custom’ method.

SEWIO Adapter

In order to use the Sewio Open Sniffer in Ubiqua, it must be attached and configured in the same sub-network as the computer running Ubiqua. Please refer to Part 1 of the Sniffer Installation.

The process of configuring the sniffer in Ubiqua is simple. First, we add the Sewio by right clicking on the Adapters View or via the Adapter main menu, and selecting the Add option.

In the Add Adapter window, click on the Custom button to add as a custom adapter.

Then select the configuration parameters; Connector Type should be Ethernet, App is Open Sniffer, then Host IP and Port the appropriate for the Sewio adapter.

At this point the Sewio adapter is added to Ubiqua.

Configuring Adapters

Once an adapter is added to the list, you can check and edit its properties by right-clicking on it and selecting the View Properties menu item (see the figure below), this will open the Properties View, as long as this view is open you can visualize other adapters properties just by selecting them on the Adapters View.

Ubiqua provides shortcuts to some of these configurations; configure radio, protocol stack, and channel are options in the adapter contextual menu. Right click on an adapter and make your selection, Ubiqua will automatically restart the adapter if it was running.

Radio configuration

The adapter you select to use may support several radio configurations (modulation, frequency band, data rate), to change between them use the contextual menu item Config Radio (see figure below). Here you can find options to select each of the adapter’s supported radio configurations.

Protocol stack

This option allows you to select the stack which will be used to decode the data captured by the selected adapter.

Channel

The available channels can change depending on the selected radio configuration. You can move the slider to select a channel or directly write it in the text box (see image below).

Capturing Traffic

To start capturing packets click on the adapter switch button or select the Start/Stop on the contextual menu. If a problem was found starting the adapter and you can’t stop or start it anymore, proceed first toggle the Attach/Detach option twice. If that doesn’t fix the problem then unplug the adapter and plug it back to your system; usually, this will resolve the problem. If you keep experiencing problems, make sure the port is not being used by another program in your system and try again. Also, please note that according to your license you could be limited to a certain number of adapters started at the same time. Whatever the cause of the problem is, the extended status of the adapter in question (found in Properties View) will display a possible solution.

Removing Adapters

Adapters on the list are maintained by the application and stored in environment files. To remove an adapter right click on it and select the Remove menu item. If you want to remove all adapters right click on the Adapters View view and select the Remove All menu item. Please note that this action can’t be undone.

Scanning Channels

Scan channels allows capturing through all channels or the selected channels. Each selected channel will capture during a specific time, at the end, Ubiqua will show the number of captured packets per channel on a graph. While Ubiqua is scanning a channel all captured traffic will be displayed in the Traffic View, you can use this to select which channel you want to set your adapter to capture.

To scan channels, right click on the adapter and select the Scan Channels menu item. After the Scan Channels dialog opens, select the channels to scan and set the scanning time per channel; to start the scanning process press the Start button. The Scan Channels dialog will hide while the scan process is in progress, to stop the process you can open the dialog again from the context menu or jut click on the Stop button in the Adapters View.

The graph in the Scan Channels dialog will display the packets captured per channel when you place the mouse over any channel. Note that the packets captured during the scanning process may appear in the Traffic View and that the channel list may be different, depending on the capabilities of the adapter used for scanning.

Multiple Ubiqua instances

Ubiqua uses a service we called the Adapter Manager. This service manages the resources (adapters) of its host and interacts with the different communication interfaces (UART, USB, IP, etc.) available, multiple instances of Ubiqua connect to one Adapter Manager running in the host as clients, and then consume those resources.

Multiple instances of Ubiqua can be attached to an Adapter at the same time. All the instances attached to it will receive notifications of its status. When an instance of Ubiqua starts capturing packets with an adapter all the other instances attached to it will receive a notification with the channel on which it started capturing, if another instance of Ubiqua tries to start capturing using the same adapter but with a different channel, the adapter will change its channel and notify all the other instances of Ubiqua attached to it about the change. When an instance of Ubiqua stops an adapter it will stop capturing packets even if there were other instances that were receiving the packets captured.

Service Recovery

Ubiqua will automatically connect to the Adapter Manager service, if Ubiqua fails to connect with the service it will retry up to 3 times, this also applies when Ubiqua loses connection with it. If after all the attempts Ubiqua can’t connect with the service it will stop trying and a Reconnect button will appear in the toolbar of the Adapter Manager view, by pressing it Ubiqua will re-attempt to connect with the service. You don’t need to run the service manually, every time Ubiqua attempts to connect with the service it will check if the service is running, in the case that it’s not running Ubiqua will start the service.

Connection Status

While Ubiqua is connecting with the Adapter Manager service a label with the status of the connection process will be shown in the toolbar of the Adapter Manager view. Every time that Ubiqua success or fail to connect with the Adapter Manager service or losses connection with it a message will be added to the Output View.

Start/Stop all adapters

The Menu item to Start/Stop capturing packets with all the sniffers (adapters whose selected application have the sniffer feature) is located in the Adapters menu. The Menu Item only affect the sniffers that are attached, so if you want to exclude a sniffer you just need to detach it.

Note: The Menu item doesn’t count or affect the adapters that are registered with an application with the feature commander.

The Menu item will make all the attached sniffers to start capturing packets in the channel they have currently selected. When all the attached sniffers are capturing packets the Menu item will change its icon and action, in this case the button will make all the sniffers to stop capturing packets.