Re: what technique is used by the network manager to connect to a particular wireless network.

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Thu, 2008-12-04 at 17:25 +0500, Ambreen Sheikh wrote:
> i am trying to connect to my wireless network using the command line.
> the steps that are followed by me are given bellow

This seems like a general wireless networking question; this list is
specifically about the NetworkManager tool that helps you do that.

> current status : connected to the wlan0 with ESSID "mydesk"
> (where mydesk is the name of the network that i am connected to)
> 
> 
> use the commands
> 
> #ifconfig wlan0 down ///////make the wlan0 interface down, now a this
> stage i am disconnected from any network available
> #ifconfig wlan0 uo ///////make the wlan0 interface up

'ifconfig up' simply enables traffic through the device, it doesn't tell
the device anything about what SSID to connect to.

> now my interface is up, but i am not connected to any netwrok, there
> are many wireless lans available and i want to connect to a particular
> one wireless lan using the console, so i use the following command
> 
> #iwconfig wlan0 essid "mydesk" 
> (where mydesk is the name of the network that i want to connected to)

Correct, you are now associated with this network.  But you're only
associated with WiFi, you haven't yet set up the Internet Protocol stuff
like addresses and routes.

> now at this stage i expect my interface to connect to the wireless lan
> with the ESSID "mydesk", but it is not the case, my browser still
> shows "no network connection"

So here's your problem; you're associated with the wifi network, but you
don't have an IP address yet.  This is done with DHCP or static IP
configuration, which is distribution dependent.  Try asking in the help
forums for your particular linux distribution.  In short, you may want
to try "dhclient wlan0", which will try to get an IP address via DHCP.

Or, if you are using NetworkManager and a desktop environment like GNOME
or KDE, you can simply pick the wifi network you'd like to connect to
from the network menu, and it'll all happen magically.

Dan