Menu

Connect To WiFi Via Console

Spend enough time in linux you will soon learn to love the console side of things. This is how you can use a text only enviroment and connect to a wireless network.


Look For Available Networks

The following will list all the SSID's as well as all details about them



To get just the SSID's without the extra use grep to cut down the extra details



Connect To The SSID

For this example I will assume the SSID you wish to connect to is called test


To connect to an open wireless network:



To connect to an WEP 64bit / 128bit encrypted network which has a key "1234-5678-9123-4567":



To connect to an WPA / WPA2 encrypted wireless network that has a SSID test and a passphrase peekaboo takes a few steps...first the password key has to be generated:



Now we can connect to the WPA / WPA2 network:



The options explained:


-d wext instructs wpa_supplicant to use (Linux wireless extension driver)


-B tells wpa_supplicant to background the connection to prevent the wireless connection to drop off, if the console / terminal from which it is launched gets closed.


Optain IP / Gateway / DNS Server Information

Now that you are connected you need to obtain an ip address and other necessary network information. Luckily this is easy enough as most routers do all of this for you and one command takes care of it all.



View Currecnt Connection Information

To view full details about the SSID you are connected to:



Change Default Channel Assigned

Sometimes you need to change the channel you use to connect to a SSID:



Other times you should be ok with leaving the connection manager automatically choosing the channel: