iwconfig

<p>Iwconfig is another wireless tool that is hopefully present on your distro. Unlike iwlist, iwconfig can be used to actually set parameters in a wireless card rather than just look at their settings.</p> <p>To use iwconfig, open a terminal window and type:</p> <blockquote><p> iwconfig </p></blockquote> <p>This shows me the following. Your system may vary:</p> <blockquote>

<ul> <li>lo no wireless extensions.</li> <li>eth0 no wireless extensions.</li> <li>wlan0 IEEE 802.11b+ ESSID:&#8221;driveon&#8221; Nickname:&#8221;acx100 v0.2.0pre8&#8243; 

        Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.442 GHz  Access Point: 00:06:25:9A:50:C8
        Bit Rate:1 Mb/s   Tx-Power:18 dBm   Sensitivity''187/255
        Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off
        Power Management:off
        Link Quality''54/100  Signal level''39/100  Noise level''1/100
        Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
        Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0</li>

<li>sit0 no wireless extensions.</li> </ul> <p><em>lo</em> is my local adapter and it shows that it&#8217;s not wireless

<em>eth0</em> is my wired ethernet card and it shows that it&#8217;s not wireless

<em>wlan0</em> <strong>is</strong> my wireless card and it shows that it is wireless - good!

<em>sit0</em> stands for &#8217;simple internet transition&#8217; but that&#8217;s all I know about it. In any case - it&#8217;s not wireless. </p></blockquote> <p>I highly advise typing <em>man iwconfig</em> to get complete information on everything that can be done with the iwconfig command, but here are some of the more common commands you may want to use:</p>

<blockquote> <ul> <li>iwconfig wlan0 enc &lt; key &gt;: Sets the WEP encryption key to &lt; key &gt;</li> <li>iwconfig wlan0 mode managed: Sets the mode to managed</li> <li>iwconfig essid driveon: Sets the ESSID/SSID to &#8216;driveon&#8217;</li> <li>iwconfig channel 7: Sets the card to use channel 7</li> </ul> <ul>

<p>Note that you can put all these commands together, as in: </p></ul> <ul> <li>iwconfig wlan0 enc <mykey> mode managed essid driveon channel 7</mykey></li> </ul> </blockquote> <p>Note that iwconfig is used to set the parameters of the card, it does not bring the card &#8216;up&#8217; for use. You must use the command:</p> <blockquote><p> ifconfig wlan0 up </p></blockquote> <p>for that.</p>

– Main.FredPettis - 04 Mar 2009