What is the difference between active scan and passive scan?

android wifi android-wifi access-point
Judy picture Judy · May 11, 2011 · Viewed 8.6k times · Source

What is the difference between mWifiManager.startScanActive() and mWifiManager.startScan().
What is the difference between active scan and passive scan?

Answer

Aleadam picture Aleadam · May 11, 2011

Passive scanning listens to beacons sent by the access points. That means waiting for the beacon to be sent (usually a few seconds).

An active scanning will emit probes to those APs immediately.

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