Recently I bought notebook and needed to connect to hotel Wi-Fi network (to install Gentoo linux :) All information that I’ve found didn’t help me to setup wireless connection in less a minute. This guilde explains (in very simple way) how to connect your PC to Wi-Fi network under linux.

You should have following applications installed on your PC:

• Wi-Fi driver (this guide covers Intel 3945)
• wireless-tools
• dhcp

Follow these 7 simple steps:

1. Load Wi-Fi driver (Intel 3495 specific):
   

   modprobe ipw3945
ipw3945d

2. Figure out the name of network interface that is bound to Wi-Fi card:
   

   iwconfig

3. Find list of available networks:
   

   iwlist scanning

4. Connect to one of it:
   

   iwconfig eth1 essid ESSID

   
   where eth1 – network interface found at the second step and ESSID – id of wireless network found at the third step
5. (optional, I haven’t used it) If network is secured you should also specify key:
   

   (This sets a hex WEP key)
iwconfig eth0 key 1234123412341234abcd
(This sets an ASCII key – prefix it with “s:”)
iwconfig eth0 key s:some-password

6. Obtain IP address using DHCP:
   

   dhcpclient eth1

7. Make sure that everything is ok:
   

   ifconfig

Probably these steps are too simplistic and will not work in all cases, but they work fine for me and when I was in need for simple instructions I haven’t found such small guide.

Posted by on August 16, 2006  |  linux

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