Connecting to a Wireless network using no encryption (Not Recommended)#

If you are creating a wireless network with no encryption, all network traffic on the network is easily viewable by anyone within range of the wireless network. For example, someone driving by your building in a car. It is possible to create a network without using encryption, but it is not recommended unless the network has been secured by some other mechanism.

Note: Many consumer devices (wireless routers to connect your internal lan to the internet for example) are shipped with security features such as encryption turned off. It is recommended that you enable encryption in these devices rather than turn off encryption when creating a wireless network.

To connect using no encryption or authentication,

• ifconfig ral0 ssid "network name" -nwkey

The -nwkey argument is used to disable WEP encryption, and also deletes the temporary WEP key.

Note: io-pkt does not support a combination of Shared Key Authentication (SKA) and WEP encryption disabled.

Once you have entered the network name, the 802.11 network should be active. This can be verified with the ifconfig utility. In the case of ad-hoc networks, the status will only show active if there is at least one other peer on the (ssid) network.

• ifconfig ral0

		ral0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500%%
			ssid "network name" %%
			powersave off %%
			bssid 00:11:22:33:44:55 chan 11%%
			address: 11:44:88:44:88:44%%
			media: IEEE802.11 autoselect (OFDM36 mode 11g) %%
			status: active%%

Once the network status is active, you can send and receive packets on the wireless link.

You may also use wpa_supplicant to associate to a security disabled wifi network. For example, if your /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file can contain a network block as follows:

	network = {
		ssid = "network name"
		key_mgmt = NONE
	}

you can then run

• wpa_supplicant -i ral0 -c/et/wpa_supplicant.conf.

You may also use wpa_cli to tell wpa_supplicant what you want to do. You can use either ifconfig or wpa_cli to check the status of the network.

Please refer to the TCP/IP Configuration in a Wireless Network (Client in Infrastructure Mode, or Ad-hoc mode) section for TCP/IP interface configuration to complete your network configuration.