Wireless Tools For Linux

The Linux Wireless Extension and the Wireless Tools are an Open Source Project.

Wireless Extension (WE): Is a Generic API allowing a driver to expose to the user space configuration and statistics spacific to common wireless LAN's. The Beauty of it is that a single set of tools can support all the variations of the wireless LAN's regardless of their type (as long as the driver supports Wireless Extension.) Another advantage is these parameters may be changed on the fly without restarting the driver or Linux.

Wireless Tools (WT): is a set of tools allowing manipulation of the Wireless Extensions. They use a textual interface and are rather crude, but aim to support the full Wireless Extension. There are other tools you can use with Wireless Extension, however Wireless Tools is the reference Implementation.

iwconfig: Manipulate the basic wireless parameters.
iwlist: Allow user to initiate scanning and list frequencies, bit-rates, encryption keys...
iwspy: allow to get per node link quality.
iwpriv: allow to manipulate the Wireless Extensions specific to a driver (private).
ifrename: allow to name interfaces based on various static criteria.

Most Linux Distributions also have Integrated Wireless Extensions Support in their networking initialization scripts, for easier boot time configuration of wireless interfaces. They also include wireless tools as part of their standard package. (I have verified that Debian Etch includes these Extensions with base installation)

# iwconfig --version
Gives Detail of Wireless Tools and Wireless Extensions Configuration.
      For Kernels before 2.2.14/2.3.30 use Wireless tools version 19
      For Kernels after 2.2.14/2.3.30 use Wireless tools version 20 or greater
      For Kernels after 2.6.13 use Wireless tools version 26 or greater

The biggest Challenge I have encountered with Wireless Tools thus far isn't getting the utility to work, but rather installing a driver for the hardware I wish to use. The following commands will allow one to identify the chipset of their wireless hardware

ISA Card: Your usually out of luck.
PCI Card: use the command lspci to display card identification screens.
USB Dongle: Most of the time use lsusb, in some cases lsusb doesn't work (example usbfs isn't mounted) one can retrieve the information form the kernel log using dmesg or in (/var/log/messages)
32bit PCMCIA Cardbus: Kernel 2.4.X or 2.6.X with the Kernel PCMCIA Subsystem, lspci
32bit PCMCIA Cardbus: useing older kernel with Standalone PCMCIA Subsystem, cardctl ident
16bit PCMCIA Cardbus: Kernel 2.4.16 or later, pccardctl ident
16bit PCMCIA Cardbus: Older Kernel, cardctl ident

Note** The cardmgr will also write some identification strings in the message logs (/var/log/daemon.log) that may be different from the real card identification strings


This information is here to serve primarily as notes for Kinetic Bands internal uses, they are web accessible only in hopes that the information contained may be useful to others, this data was copied in part from the following source, you will find additional information and troubleshooting info there.

http://hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html