Software Manual

WE865-DUAL Software User Guide

1vv0300788 Rev. 0 08/08/08

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Some cards may not apply changes done through Wireless Extensions immediately (they

may wait to aggregate the changes or apply it only when the card is brought up via ifconfig).

This command (when available) forces the card to apply all pending changes.

This is normally not needed, because the card will eventually apply the changes, but can be

useful for debugging.

Display

For each device which supports wireless extensions, iwconfig will display the name of the MAC

protocol used (name of device for proprietary protocols), the ESSID (Network Name), the NWID, the

frequency (or channel), the sensitivity, the mode of operation, the Access Point address, the bit-rate,

the RTS threshold, the fragmentation threshold, the encryption key and the power management

settings (depending on availability).

The parameters displayed have the same meaning and values as the parameters you can set, please

refer to the previous part for a detailed explanation of them.

Some parameters are only displayed in short/abbreviated form (such as encryption). You may use

iwlist to get all the details.

Some parameters have two modes (such as bitrate). If the value is prefixed by `=', it means that the

parameter is fixed and forced to that value, if it is prefixed by ‘:', the parameter is in automatic mode

and the current value is shown (and may change).

Access Point/Cell

An address equal to 00:00:00:00:00:00 means that the card failed to associate with an

Access Point (most likely a configuration issue). The Access Point parameter will be shown

as Cell in ad-hoc mode (for obvious reasons), but otherwise works the same.

If /proc/net/wireless exists, iwconfig will also display its content. Note that those values will

depend on the driver and the hardware specifics, so you need to refer to your driver

documentation for proper interpretation of those values.

Link quality

Overall quality of the link. May be based on the level of contention or interference, the bit or

frame error rate, how good the received signal is, some timing synchronisation, or other

hardware metric. This is an aggregate value, and depends totally on the driver and hardware.

Signal level

Received signal strength (RSSI - strength of received signal). May be arbitrary units or dBm,

iwconfig uses driver meta information to interpret the raw value given by /proc/net/wireless

and display the proper unit or maximum value (using 8 bit arithmetic). In Ad-Hoc mode, this

may be undefined and you should use iwspy.