Getting Started with Wireless

by Clive — last modified Jun 11, 2009 08:50 AM

— filed under: Wireless

Help and Advice on getting your wireless networking card working with Fedora.

Applicable to Fedora Versions

All Fedora versions

Requirements

Explanation of requirement

Fedora
wireless card you want to get working.
Some spare time

Doing the Work

Basic description of what will be done and what is expected.

First we need to find out what wireless network card is installed in your machine, by using one of the following commands.

/sbin/lspci
or
/sbin/lsusb

Then find out what chipset your wireless card has by looking at the output of step 1, e.g.

02:00.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)
Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI
08:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5006EG 802.11 b/g Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212/AR5213 Multiprotocol MAC/baseband processor (rev 01)

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0bda:8197 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0846:4110 NetGear, Inc. MA111 WiFi (v1)
Bus 001 Device 010 : ID 148f:2573 Ralink Technology, Corp

Follow the instructions to get the chipset working with Fedora for your wireless card e.g. / Broadcom / AR5212/AR5213 / Ralink rt2x00 chipset on Fedora 5 ACX100 /ACX111 rtl8187 chipset, for other chipsets check out the wireless page.
It's worth enabling Network Manager if it's not already installed as this will help manage both wireless and wired network connections.
It should all now work, so you can connect to the internet.

Troubleshooting

How to test

After doing the work you should have a working wireless connection. Here's a few commands that will help you Troubleshoot any problems you still have

Common problems and fixes

Symptoms	Resolution
Your machine is currently running Windows and you want to check the network card will work in Fedora .	Read some classic RHL9 hardware documentation or in Windows, Start > Run > msinfo32 > Components > Network > Adapter, will give you the name of the Adapter you have installed. Check to see if this is supported in Fedora.