Wireless setups

[Lowell Gilbert]

Luke Kearney <lukek at meibin.net> writes:

> On 19 Oct 2003 21:53:15 -0400
> Lowell Gilbert <freebsd-questions-local at be-well.ilk.org> spake thus:
> 
> > Luke Kearney <lukek at meibin.net> writes:
> > 
> > > Hi There,
> > > I have recently installed 4.8R on my IBM Thinkpad notebook which
> > > fortunately includes a wireless NIC. The nic is recognised as wi0 for
> > > which I am grateful as Linux did not recognise the card first time
> > > around. Now I often move between networks and having to set the wepkey
> > > and ssid etc etc by hand will become very tiresome very quickly. I was
> > > wondering if any one can point me in the direction of a better way to
> > > set these. I am guessing that this will still have to be done after the
> > > boot but what do people use ?
> > > 
> > > I was able to get the interface up and ping other hosts so no problems
> > > there but can this NIC be set for dhcp rather than having to go through
> > > the grief of setting everything manually ?
> > 
> > Doesn't WEP have to be configured *before* you can communicate with
> > the DHCP server in the first place?
> 
> Hi,
> You are of course absolutely correct, so I am kinda wondering how to
> manage this. Without connecting using the correct WEP it is a bit tough
> to get an IP.
> 
> Again, any insights into this are appreciated. 

Well, I'm not sure what you'd really like, so it's a little hard to
say.  Obviously there is a chicken-and-egg problem that will keep you
from using DHCP to figure out the correct WEP key.  You will need to
start with the WEP key from some a priori knowledge and then (at best)
let the machine use that to run DHCP.  I suppose you could choose a
pccard configuration by hand to select the WEP key and then reload the
interface.