Re: aircrack won't work
 

@jackdoor; yes. Running Debian. I run Debian on every workstation I have at home, apart from 2 XP machines used for testing and firmware updates of my various devices (zaurus, phones, NIT, radio scanners, etc...).

@JayOnThaBeat; Yes, it does depend on the amount of data collected. Each IV 'leaks' information. The more IV's collected, the faster you will be able to retrieve a key - since the IV keyspace is so small, they get re-used and you can guess succeeding bits.

Re: aircrack won't work
 

... well my question/comment was whether or not the level of activity on the network was related to the number of iv's gathered.

i'm filing your response under DUH.

Re: aircrack won't work
 

Of course, the number of iv gathered depends on network activity.
The "trick" is to generate network activity using aireplay-ng, but for that you need an adapter supporting injection.

Re: aircrack won't work
 

Well, yes. You need to capture encrypted data packets in order to get an IV off each. If there's no traffic on the network...there are no packets being transmitted or received.

ARP packets have a fixed length, and it just so happens that each ARP request the AP re-broadcasts, gets a new IV. This is how you can run out the IV key space.