Wireless

Bringing up Wireless Interface

The wireless interface (most commonly wlan0) can be brought up with:

ifconfig <interface> up

Wireless Bringup on Boot

The wireless interface bring-up behaviour can be configured within /etc/network/interfaces.d.

Connecting to Networks (wpa_supplicant)

A network connection can be established by starting the wpa_supplicant daemon. The WPA supplicant requires a configuration file with a list of network configurations to use for connection.

$ wpa_supplicant -B -Dnl80211 -iwlan1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant

Checking Network Connection

iw dev <interface> link

If connected to a network the output will show the details of the connection:

$ iw dev wlan0 link

Connected to 12:34:56:78:9a:bc (on wlan0)
	SSID: MyNetwork
        freq: 2437
        RX: 32843 bytes (117 packets)
        TX: 1303 bytes (12 packets)
        signal: -44 dBm
        tx bitrate: 150.0 MBit/s MCS 7 40MHz short GI

        bss flags:      short-preamble short-slot-time
        dtim period:    1
        beacon int:     100

$ iw dev wlan0 link

Not connected.

Getting an IP Address (dhclient)

dhclient <interface>

Checking IP Address and Connectivity

Checking Interface Configuration/Connection (ifconfig)

$ ifconfig

wlan1     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr e0:e5:cf:00:ff:22  
          inet addr:10.0.111.160  Bcast:10.0.111.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::e2e5:cfff:fe00:ff22/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:201 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:54949 (54.9 KB)  TX bytes:1526 (1.5 KB)

Checking Internet Connection (ping)

$ ping google.com

PING google.com (216.58.194.206) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from sfo03s01-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.194.206): icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=18.0 ms