wifi

[Russell Sears]

Stephen Shelton wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 07:36:29PM +0200, Christophe Badoit wrote:
>> For WEP, I'm currently connecting with :
>>
>> ifconfig eth0 up
>> iwconfig eth0 essid any
>> iwconfig eth0 key 'mykey'
>> iwconfig eth0 essid 'myssid'
>> ifup eth0
>>
>> Something strange, I am unable to set the key (iwconfig key) if the
>> essid is not "any".
>>
>> I began patching wifi-radar (a wifi python/gtk app) for the FR, if I've
>> got enough time, I'll try to release it.
>>
>> - --
>> Christophe Badoit
> 
> I was able to connect to my WEP network doing the above. Thanks for the
> pointer... that should get me started!
> 
> I'd rather see wicd used as a gui; my experience with wifi-radar has been just
> awful. The UI locks up frequently, is it even using any multi threading? Wicd
> has worked very nicely for me, and seems a bit more configurable.

Not to jump into a religious war, but why not use something based on 
NetworkManager?

It provides clean separation between the scripting / hardware 
interfacing stuff and the gui.  It also supports multiple types of 
network devices (I use it to for the ethernet and wifi on my laptop, and 
it seems to know what pppd and modems are...).

It supports all sorts of crazy network security protocols, including 
many of the wifi ones and openvpn.  It's the default under ubuntu these 
days, and is distribution and gui toolkit agnostic.  There are GUIs for 
qt and gtk (and perhaps others).  I think there are also command line 
utilities, though I've never needed them.

Regardless of which GUI is added, it probably should also know about 
usb0, and GPRS so that it's easy to switch between networks, and to tell 
if you're burning through your cell phone data plan or using wifi... ;)

-Rusty

> 
> I'd really like to see someone who knows what they are talking about update that
> wiki page; I'm sure that's a sore spot for quite a few new openmoko users...
>