iwconfigThe ifconfig command shows the status of your network interfaces, even wireless ones. However, it can't show all the data associated with a wireless interface because ifconfig simply doesn't know about it. To get the maximum data associated with a wireless card, you want to use iwconfig instead of ifconfig. $ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"einstein" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:12:17:31:4F:C6 Bit Rate:48 Mb/s Tx-Power:18 dBm Sensitivity=0/3 Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=41/94 Signal level=-54 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm Rx invalid nwid:1047 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:73 Invalid misc:73 Missed beacon:21 You can see the data unique to wireless interfaces that iwconfig provides, including the type of card (802.11g in this case), the ESSID or network name (this network's ESSID is einstein), the mode or kind of network to which you're connected, the MAC address of the wireless access point (here 00:12:17:31:4F:C6), and various details about the quality of the wireless connection. The combination of ifconfig and iwconfig tells you everything you need to know about your wireless network interface. And, just as you can also use ifconfig to configure your wired cards, you can also use iwconfig to configure your wireless cards, as you'll see in the next section. |