[2024-feb-29] Sad news: Eric Layton aka Nocturnal Slacker aka vtel57 passed away on Feb 26th, shortly after hospitalization. He was one of our Wiki's most prominent admins. He will be missed.
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slackbook:wifi [2012/09/02 05:41 (UTC)] – [Wired Equivilant Protection (or Lack Thereof)] allend | slackbook:wifi [2012/09/17 00:06 (UTC)] – [Wifi Protected Access] Added original text and formatting mfillpot | ||
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===== iwconfig ===== | ===== iwconfig ===== | ||
- | Wireless networking is somewhat more complicated than traditional wired networking, and requires additional tools for setup. Slackware includes a diverse collection of wireless networking tools to allow you to configure your wireless network interface card (WNIC) at the most basic level. We won't cover everything here, but should give you a solid foundation to get up and running quickly. The first tool we are going to look at is iwconfig(8). When run without any argument, iwconfig displays the current wireless information on any and all NICs on your computer. | + | Wireless networking is somewhat more complicated than traditional wired |
+ | networking, and requires additional tools for setup. Slackware includes | ||
+ | a diverse collection of wireless networking tools to allow you to | ||
+ | configure your wireless network interface card (WNIC) at the most basic | ||
+ | level. We won't cover everything here, but should give you a solid | ||
+ | foundation to get up and running quickly. | ||
+ | to look at is **//iwconfig//**(8). When run without | ||
+ | any argument, | ||
+ | wireless information on any and all NICs on your computer. | ||
- | darkstar:~# iwconfig | ||
- | lo no wireless extensions. | ||
- | | ||
- | eth0 no wireless extensions. | ||
- | | ||
- | wmaster0 | ||
- | | ||
- | wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn | ||
- | Mode: | ||
- | 00: | ||
- | Bit Rate=54 Mb/s | ||
- | Retry min limit: | ||
- | Encryption key:off | ||
- | Power Management: | ||
- | Link Quality=100/ | ||
- | Rx invalid nwid: | ||
- | Tx excessive retries: | ||
- | | ||
- | tun0 no wireless extensions. | ||
- | Unlike wired networks, | + | < |
+ | darkstar:~# iwconfig | ||
+ | lo no wireless | ||
- | Typical wireless networks operate on 11 different frequencies. In order to connect to even the most basic wireless network, you will have to setup these two pieces of information, | + | eth0 no wireless extensions. |
+ | |||
+ | wmaster0 | ||
+ | |||
+ | wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn | ||
+ | Mode: | ||
+ | 00: | ||
+ | Bit Rate=54 Mb/s | ||
+ | Retry min limit: | ||
+ | Encryption key:off | ||
+ | Power Management: | ||
+ | Link Quality=100/ | ||
+ | Rx invalid nwid: | ||
+ | Tx excessive retries: | ||
+ | |||
+ | tun0 no wireless extensions. | ||
+ | </ | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Unlike wired networks, wireless networks are //" | ||
+ | hard to define, and multiple networks may overlap one another. In order | ||
+ | to avoid confusion, each wireless network has (hopefully) unique | ||
+ | identifiers. The two most basic identifiers are the Extended Service | ||
+ | Set Identifier (ESSID) and the channel or frequency for radio | ||
+ | transmission. The ESSID is simply a name that identifies the wireless | ||
+ | network in question; you may have heard it referred to as the //" | ||
+ | name"// | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Typical wireless networks operate on 11 different frequencies. In | ||
+ | order to connect to even the most basic wireless network, you will | ||
+ | have to setup these two pieces of information, | ||
+ | before setting up things like the WNIC's IP address. Here you can see | ||
+ | that my ESSID is set to //" | ||
+ | transmitting at 2.432 GHz. This is all that is required to connect to | ||
+ | an unencrypted wireless LAN. (For any of you out there expecting | ||
+ | to come to my house and use my unencrypted wireless, you should know | ||
+ | that you'll have to break a 2048-bit SSL key before the access point | ||
+ | will let you communicate with my LAN.) | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | < | ||
darkstar:~# iwconfig wlan0 essid nest \ | darkstar:~# iwconfig wlan0 essid nest \ | ||
- | freq 2.432G | + | freq 2.432G</ |
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | The //freq// and //channel// arguments control basically | ||
+ | the same thing. | ||
+ | frequency or channel to use, Slackware can usually figure this out for | ||
+ | you. | ||
- | The [freq] and [channel] arguments control basically the same thing. You only need to use one. If you are unsure what frequency or channel to use, Slackware can usually figure this out for you. | + | < |
darkstar:~# iwconfig wlan0 essid nest \ | darkstar:~# iwconfig wlan0 essid nest \ | ||
channel auto | channel auto | ||
+ | </ | ||
- | Now Slackware will attempt to connect to the strongest access point on the " | ||
+ | Now Slackware will attempt to connect to the strongest access point on | ||
+ | the //" | ||
===== Wired Equivalent Protection (or Lack Thereof) ===== | ===== Wired Equivalent Protection (or Lack Thereof) ===== | ||
- | Wireless networking is by its very nature less secure than wired networking. Having your information | + | Wireless networking is by its very nature less secure than wired |
+ | networking. Having your information | ||
+ | it highly susceptible to interception by third parties, so over the | ||
+ | years a number of methods have been devised to make wireless | ||
+ | networking more secure. | ||
+ | Protection, or WEP for short, and fell far short of its goal. If you | ||
+ | are still using WEP today, I encourage you to consider using WPA2 or | ||
+ | some other form of stronger encryption. Attacks against WEP are | ||
+ | trivial and take only minutes to perform. Unfortunately there are | ||
+ | still access points configured for WEP, and you may need to connect to | ||
+ | one from time to time. Connecting to WEP encrypted access points is | ||
+ | fairly simple, particularly if you have the key in hexidecimal | ||
+ | format. We'll need to pass the //key// argument along with the | ||
+ | password in hexidecimal | ||
+ | you'll need to prepend | ||
+ | speaking, | ||
- | darkstar:~# iwconfig wlan0 \ | ||
- | key cf80baf8bf01a160de540bfb1c | ||
- | darkstar:~# iwconfig wlan0 \ | ||
- | key s: | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | |||
+ | darkstar:~# iwconfig wlan0 \ | ||
+ | key cf80baf8bf01a160de540bfb1c | ||
+ | darkstar:~# iwconfig wlan0 \ | ||
+ | key s: | ||
+ | </ | ||
===== Wifi Protected Access ===== | ===== Wifi Protected Access ===== | ||
- | Wifi Protected Access (or WPA for short) was the successor for WEP that aimed to fix several problems with wireless encryption. Unfortunately, | + | Wifi Protected Access (or WPA for short) was the successor for WEP that |
+ | aimed to fix several problems with wireless encryption. Unfortunately, | ||
+ | WPA had some flaws as well. An update called WPA2 offers even stronger | ||
+ | protection. At this time, WPA2 is supported by nearly all wireless | ||
+ | network cards and access points, but some older devices may only | ||
+ | support WEP. If you need to secure your wireless network traffic, WPA2 | ||
+ | should be considered the minimum level of protection required. | ||
+ | Unfortunately, | ||
+ | WPA2 encryption on its own. For that, we need a helper daemon, | ||
+ | **//wpa_supplicant//**(8). | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Unfortunately, | ||
+ | protected network; you'll have to edit | ||
+ | ''/ | ||
+ | editor. Here we will discuss the simplest form of WPA2 protection, the | ||
+ | Pre-Shared Key, or PSK for short. For details on setting up Slackware | ||
+ | to connect to more complicated WPA2 encrypted networks, see the man | ||
+ | page for '' | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | < | ||
+ | |||
+ | # / | ||
+ | # ======================== | ||
+ | # This line enables the use of wpa_cli which is used by rc.wireless | ||
+ | # if possible (to check for successful association) | ||
+ | ctrl_interface=/ | ||
+ | # By default, only root (group 0) may use wpa_cli | ||
+ | ctrl_interface_group=0 | ||
+ | eapol_version=1 | ||
+ | ap_scan=1 | ||
+ | fast_reauth=1 | ||
+ | # | ||
+ | |||
+ | # WPA protected network, supply your own ESSID and WPAPSK here: | ||
+ | network={ | ||
+ | scan_ssid=1 | ||
+ | ssid=" | ||
+ | key_mgmt=WPA-PSK | ||
+ | psk=" | ||
+ | } | ||
+ | </ | ||
- | Unfortunately, | + | The block of text we're interested in is the network |
+ | curly braces. Here we have set the ssid for the network | ||
+ | //" | ||
+ | passphrase"// | ||
+ | configured. | ||
+ | then obtain an IP address via DHCP or set a static address. Of | ||
+ | course, this is a lot of work; there must be an easier way to do this. | ||
- | # / | ||
- | # ======================== | ||
- | # This line enables the use of wpa_cli which is used by rc.wireless | ||
- | # if possible (to check for successful association) | ||
- | ctrl_interface=/ | ||
- | # By default, only root (group 0) may use wpa_cli | ||
- | ctrl_interface_group=0 | ||
- | eapol_version=1 | ||
- | ap_scan=1 | ||
- | fast_reauth=1 | ||
- | #country=US | ||
- | | ||
- | # WPA protected network, supply your own ESSID and WPAPSK here: | ||
- | network={ | ||
- | scan_ssid=1 | ||
- | ssid=" | ||
- | key_mgmt=WPA-PSK | ||
- | psk=" | ||
- | } | ||
- | The block of text we're interested in is the network block enclosed by curly braces. Here we have set the ssid for the network " | + | <!-- not closing |
- | rc.inet1.conf revisited | + | ==== rc.inet1.conf revisited |
- | Welcome back to rc.inet1.conf. You' | + | Welcome back to rc.inet1.conf. You will recall that in Chapter 14, Networking we used this configuration file to automatically configure NICs whenever Slackware boots. Now, we will use it to configure wifi as well. |
< | < | ||
- | Recall that each NIC had a name or number that identified the variables that correspond with it? The same hold true for wifi NICs, only they have even more variables due to the added complexity of wireless networking. | + | Recall that each NIC had a name or number that identified the variables that correspond with it? The same holds true for wifi NICs, only they have even more variables due to the added complexity of wireless networking. |
- | # rc.inet1.conf (excert) | + | # rc.inet1.conf (excerpt) |
# ====================== | # ====================== | ||
## Example config information for wlan0. | ## Example config information for wlan0. | ||
Line 107: | Line 196: | ||
# | # | ||
- | When we discussed wired ethernet, each n in the variable corresponded with the n in ethn. Here however, that no longer holds true. Notice that the variable IFNAME[4] has a value of wlan0. It is common for wireless cards to have an interface name other than ethn and that is reflected here. When rc.inet1.conf is read by the start-up scripts, Slackware knows to apply all these options to the wlan0 wifi NIC instead of the (probably non-existant) eth4 wired NIC. Many of the other options are the same. IP address information is added in exactly the same way we discussed for wired network cards in [[: | + | When we discussed wired ethernet, each n in the variable corresponded with the n in ethn. Here however, that no longer holds true. Notice that the variable IFNAME[4] has a value of wlan0. It is common for wireless cards to have an interface name other than ethn and that is reflected here. When rc.inet1.conf is read by the start-up scripts, Slackware knows to apply all these options to the wlan0 wifi NIC instead of the (probably non-existent) eth4 wired NIC. Many of the other options are the same. IP address information is added in exactly the same way we discussed for wired network cards in [[: |
- | To begin, WLAN_ESSID[n] and WLAN_CHANNEL[n] should be self-explainatory | + | To begin, WLAN_ESSID[n] and WLAN_CHANNEL[n] should be self-explanatory |
- | But wait, that's so much work! And what if I need to connect to multiple wireless networks? I take my laptop to work and school and need to seemlessly | + | But wait, that's so much work! And what if I need to connect to multiple wireless networks? I take my laptop to work and school and need to seamlessly |
===== Wicd ===== | ===== Wicd ===== | ||
Line 141: | Line 230: | ||
On the graphical front-end, options for different networks are available via the Preferences button adjacent to the ESSID listed. In the terminal client, the same options can be reached by highlighting the ESSID you wish to use and pressing the right arrow key, which opens a configuration page for that network. | On the graphical front-end, options for different networks are available via the Preferences button adjacent to the ESSID listed. In the terminal client, the same options can be reached by highlighting the ESSID you wish to use and pressing the right arrow key, which opens a configuration page for that network. | ||
- | =====Sources===== | + | ====== Chapter Navigation ====== |
+ | |||
+ | **Previous Chapter: [[slackbook: | ||
+ | |||
+ | **Next Chapter: [[slackbook: | ||
+ | ======Sources====== | ||
* Original source: http:// | * Original source: http:// | ||