1.1. Why Debian and why just this card?

I have been trying for months to get wireless working on Debian and after reading far and wide and getting help from irc.debian.org, I realized that there really is no Cookbook in getting wireless set up. Thus having just done it I want to commit to 'paper' so that you all can use it and I can refer to it knowing it is safe somewhere. :)

1.2. Required Hardware

By required I mean, here is what I used to get this to work, and may serve as guide to anyone who wants to know what really works.

BEFW11S4- EtherFast? Wireless AP + Cable/DSL Router w/4-Port Switch. I really really like this WAP (Wireless Access Point). It is OS independent (read, linux friendly) and is configured using a browser so no need to touch Microsoft software at all, even to configure it. And if you don't know what a switch is, let me tell ya, they rock. Essentially they allow the NIC to communicate in both directions at the same time. I highly recommend one.

Link-sys WPC11. I have a version 3.0 and don't recommend any thing less than a version 2.5 Cost about 80 dollars

1.3. Software Requirements

Debian Distribution. I find the 'testing' distribution to work well

go to Absolute Systems and download the 11Mbps linux-wlan(tm) Project

you need the pcmcia-cs. Get this by

apt-get install pcmcia-cs

This is different from pcmcia-source which I also asked you apt-get. Thus also do

apt-get install pcmcia-source

You need the wireless tools so

apt-get install wireless-tools

You will also need some way to setup you IP address on your wireless card, I recommend either

apt-get install DHCP-client

to install the DHCP-client that will automatically configure your IP address, if you have a DHCP server. The WAP-11 hardware does provide DHCP server capabilities

Or at least have the pump application, which also will query a DHCP server and get you an IP address from the DHCP server. Note I tend to use pump when I am trying out new hardware to see if there is a connection, since to test a particular device, say eth0 I would type

pump -i eth0

where the option -i tells pump what device to try to get an IP address. In this particular case, when I could not get Debian to automatically set up my wireless card, which was device wlan0, I would type

pump -i wlan0

and pump would try to set up the device. Anyway, the point is, that it is a good trouble shooting command, and you should know about it, and I talk more about it later.

I also recommend you use the "kernel-package" package when you want to build your new kernel, which I will get to. This tool is very good and you should be using it anyway when you are building new kernel for the Debian distribution. You can install it by typing

apt-get install kernel-package

Also, be sure to read the documentation it comes with, in case I don't do a good job explaining how to use it, later in this document

1.4. Kernel Configuration

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1.4.2. What NOT to Enable

One of the main stumbling blocks was to realize that the pcmcia support in the kernel is not as good as the pcmcia-source support that one gets when you build it from pcmcia-source.

I use either

make xconfig

or

make menuconfig

to configure my kernel, so when you configure your kernel, be sure to not have pcmcia support enabled under

General setup

Nor do you want to select any particular pcmcia card under

Network device support

. I repeat you do not want this under the kernel and you will be building it when you download pcmcia-source.

Be sure to download all the necessary components before you take pcmcia support out of the kernel, otherwise, if you were using a pcmcia card for net access, you will not be able to connect to the Internet using the new kernel, until you have built both pcmcia support and module drivers for the wireless card