Raspberry Pi A, User Manual, Page: 105 / 314

C H A P T E R 5
N E T W O R K C O N F I G U R A T I O N
89
Figure 5-10:
Editing the
interfaces
file for wireless
network access
Once the entry is in place, save the file by pressing CTRL + O and then quit
nano
with
CTRL + X.
TIP
The device ID of
wlan0
is correct if this is the first wireless device you’ve set up on your Pi. If
it isn’t, the number at the end will be different. Type
iwconfig
to see a current list of wireless
devices, and change the lines in the preceding code example accordingly.
The last line of the
interfaces
file makes reference to a configuration file,
wpa.conf
,
which does not yet exist. This file is used by a tool known as
wpasupplicant
, designed to
provide Linux with an easy way to connect to networks secured with Wireless Protected Access
( WPA ) encryption.
Using
wpasupplicant
, you can connect the Pi to almost any wireless network—regardless
of whether it’s protected by WPA or its newer replacement WPA2—in both Advanced
Encryption Standard (AES) and Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) modes. Despite its
name,
wpasupplicant
also allows connection to wireless networks using the older Wired
Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption standard.