WPA Supplicant

WPA_Supplicant

Introduction

Most laptops and many desktops use wireless network interfaces as their primary means of staying connected to the internet. The wpa_supplicant(8) tool which is distributed as a part of FreeBSD's base helps handle all these networks with ease, so that you won't have to lift a finger to connect to whichever one of your wireless networks is available. It even gets put to use during the bootup process at the same time other network devices are being brought up, so that the networks are available for use as the startup scripts for various services are being launched.

  * Supports Plaintext Networks
  * Supports Static WEP Encrypted Networks
  * Supports Pre-Shared Key WPA Encrypted Networks
  * Supports EAP-Authenticated WPA Encrypted Networks
  * Supports EAP-Authenticated IEEE8021X (optionally Dynamic WEP Encrypted) Networks

Documentation

Man Pages

  * wpa_supplicant(8)
  * wpa_supplicant.conf(5)

Other

  * Wpa_supplicant on Wikipedia

Examples

Example 1 - Static WEP

I have an iwi0 interface which connects to multiple WEP-encrypted networks. Here's how to set it up so that it automatically picks up whichever network is in range.

/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

  network={
      ssid="homenet"
      key_mgmt=NONE
      wep_tx_keyidx=0
      wep_key0=fedcba98765432109876543210
      }
  network={
      ssid="worknet"
      key_mgmt=NONE
      wep_tx_keyidx=0
      wep_key0=98765432109876543210abcdef
      }

/etc/rc.conf

  ifconfig_iwi0="WPA DHCP"

That's it, next time I booted up, my wireless interface was hijacked by wpa_supplicant, which keeps track of which of my configured networks are available and ensures that I only connect to one of the ones I have specifically configured in my wpa_supplicant.conf(5) file.