Quick Links: What is it? | Why do I want this? | How do I make it work? | Download
What is it?
wiconf is a utility that allows you to configure your laptop to handle
different wireless situations however you want. Neither -STABLE nor
-CURRENT branches offered me the kind of flexibility I needed, and by the
end of the school year this year I had about 5 different configurations
(one or two line shell scripts doing ifconfig and such) for the different
wireless networks I would frequent. I broke down and wrote this to meet my own needs so when I head back up to school I don't have any issues.
Why do I want this?
The tools FreeBSD gives you are not enough to support multiple unique
wireless networks. If you are usually hopping between (or just generally
use) two or more wireless networks, then wiconf is for you. On boot and
pccard insertion, it will automatically associate with the best available
access point based on the priority of the entries in your configuration.
How easy is this thing to setup and use?
Firstly, you will need to have wiconf tell FreeBSD about itself and your card. So, if you only have one PCMCIA card inserted you can type this command and it will automatically do that for you!
In making wiconf I wanted it to be as hands-free and automated as possible. After a few commands to configure wiconf, you never have to touch it again unles you want to make changes to the configuration!
nightfall# wiconf config --add
Probe results:
NETGEAR MA401RA Wireless PC / Card
Card entry found on line 2070 of /etc/defaults/pccard.conf
Added new entry to /etc/pccard.conf
Noteably, you will have to run this as root so that it will be able to update /etc/pccard.conf(8).
The next step is to start adding network information. This, too, is easy. Here's an example using DHCP on my home network:nightfall# wiconf add --ssid="homenet" --dhcp
Added new entry to wiconf.conf.
SSID: homenet
DHCP: 1
Priority: 0
And let's say that your office has another wireless network named "officenet." But your office WAP doesn't run dhcp, so you have to set your IP and route manually.nightfall# wiconf add --ssid="officenet" --route="192.168.0.254" \
--ifconfig="inet 192.168.0.2 netmask 0xffffff00"
Added new entry to wiconf.conf.
SSID: officenet
Ifconfig: inet 192.168.0.2 netmask 0xffffff00
Route: 192.168.0.254
Priority: 0
So now you have both networks configured. Now your laptop will associate with whichever network is available on boot, wireless card insertion, or the "manual" method.
The manual method is simply a simulation of the card insertion:nightfall# wiconf insert wi0
wiconf: List of APs found:
wiconf: homenet / 00:09:5b:4d:74:82
wiconf:
wiconf: Using the following entry (highest priority of matches):
wiconf: SSID: homenet
wiconf: Ifconfig: inet 192.168.0.3 netmask 0xffffff00
wiconf: Priority: 10
wiconf:
wiconf: Setting SSID to homenet
wiconf: Running ifconfig wi0 inet 192.168.0.3 netmask 0xffffff00
wiconf: Setting default route to 192.168.0.1
wiconf: Associated with homenet
Download
| Latest Version: | wiconf-0.3.tar.gz |
| Older Versions: | wiconf-0.2.tar.gz |