On May 23, 2005, at 11:04 am, Roy Marples wrote:
On Sat, 2005-05-21 at 09:25 +0100, Stroller wrote:
What's the difference between wpa_supplicant & wireless-tools, then?
Both do the same job - provide the tools to configure your wireless
card.
wpa_supplicant is a daemon that runs in the background and when it
associates with an AP in your list it applies the pre-defined security
settings. Any current wireless security on SOHO boxes is supported.
wireless-tools is a set of programs that configure your card per your
settings and call it a day. Gentoo baselayout does some rudimentry
scanning and AP selection, so it's not that bad. Only WEP security is
supported.
Thanks to both yourself & Mr Gianelloni for clarification. I'm sorry
for the confusion.
Sounds like wpa_supplicant is the more sophisticated software - I shall
look into it.
One minor point:
On May 23, 2005, at 7:58 pm, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
Surely a user who emerges prism54-firmware will depend upon
wireless-tools?
... They could also be setting up their card
as an access point or as a sniffer device.
I think the access-point will need `iwconfig` (or similar if it's
provided by wpa_supplicant) to set the SSID & (optionally) WEP key.
That's what I use around here, anyway.
I intended to cover the sniffing aspect in an earlier posting - it's a
fairly niche usage, and I'd imagine it to be rare that a machine will
be dedicated to sniffing for networks & never used to connect to one.
But in any case, the functionality contained in wpa_supplicant covers
my arguments, and I apologise for not being aware of it.
Stroller
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