Some wireless chipsets also require firmware, in addition to a corresponding driver. At boot, udev takes an inventory of your hardware and loads appropriate modules (drivers) for your corresponding hardware, which will in turn allow creation of a network interface. The default Arch Linux kernel is modular, meaning many of the drivers for machine hardware reside on the hard drive and are available as modules. The Network configuration#Network managers section describes several programs that can be used to automatically manage your wireless interface, some of which include a GUI and all of which include support for network profiles (useful when frequently switching wireless networks, like with laptops). The #iw section describes how to manually manage your wireless network interface / your wireless LANs using iw. This article covers both parts, and provides additional links to wireless management tools. The second is choosing a method of managing wireless connections.
The main article on network configuration is Network configuration.Ĭonfiguring wireless is a two-part process the first part is to identify and ensure the correct driver for your wireless device is installed (they are available on the installation media, but often have to be installed explicitly), and to configure the interface.
