How can I connect to a wireless network using command line in Linux?

Answer 1

Connecting to wireless is a somewhat different beast than connecting to wired networks because there are several extra aspects to the connection. The following instructions will walk you through 1) making sure your drivers are correct, 2)Connecting to the AP, 3)Joining the IP network.

First things first, make sure that you can turn on the wireless interface, which might be named wlan0, ath0, or some other convention. If you can, then you have properly installed wireless card drivers. If you can't, then you might have to install drivers, firmware, or both to get it working.

ifconfig wlan0 up

Next, the configuration of all the wireless configurations is done using the iwconfig command. Using that tool, you can enter the SSID, Access Point MAC address, etc. Usually specifying the SSID is sufficient. To see a list of available SSID's to connect to, use iwlist, then configure your interface like so:

iwlist wlan0 scan

<produces a list of various SSID's along with their Access Point, frequency, encryption type, etc.>

iwconfig wlan0 essid "MyNetworkSSID"

Check the current configuration of your interface like this:

iwconfig wlan0

If your interface has joined with the access point, you will see all the configuration information here.

Now, your network HOPEFULLY has some sort of encryption. For that, you will need to install wpa_supplicant. The configuration here can vary from one distribution to another, but basically it will store encrypted network keys for various SSID's. If you use encryption you will have to use it, but I'm not going to explain how to set it up as it may be different on your distribution.

All of that just registers you with the Access Point. Now you can finally set your IP address either by setting it manually or obtaining it through DHCP.

Manually:

ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.100

or by DHCP

dhcpcd wlan0

or

dhclient wlan0