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# Wireless Network Quick Start

This section illustrates the basic procedure to connect a DragonFly system to an existing wireless network.  The next section will go into detail should that be required.

## Use WPA Supplicant from DPorts

DragonFly comes with WPA Supplicant in base, but it is an older version (2.1) that will not be updated again.  At the time of this writing, the version of WPA Supplicant in DPorts is 2.4.  The version in base can be used as a fallback though.

### Option 1: Install WPA Supplicant from binary package

    > pkg ins wpa_supplicant

### Option 2: Build WPA Supplicant from source

Assuming DPorts has been installed and is up to date,

    > cd /usr/dports/security/wpa_supplicant
    > make clean ; make install

### Update /etc/rc.conf

In order to use the new WPA Supplicant over the base version, it must be configured in rc.conf .  The following will accomplish this on systems using default locations:

    > echo wpa_supplicant_program="/usr/local/sbin/wpa_supplicant" >> /etc/rc.conf

## Credentials

Obtain the SSID (Service Set Identifier) and PSK (Pre-Shared Key) for the wireless network from the network administrator.

## Wireless Adapter

Identify the wireless adapter. The DragonFly GENERIC kernel includes drivers for many common wireless adapters. If the wireless adapter is one of those models, it will be shown in the output from ifconfig(8):

    > ifconfig | grep -B3 -i wireless

If a wireless adapter is not listed, an additional kernel module might be required, or it might be a model not supported by DragonFly.  This example shows the Ralink ral0 wireless adapter.

## Configure WPA Supplicant

Add an entry for this network to /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf. If the file does not exist, create it. Replace _myssid_ and _mypsk_ with the SSID and PSK provided by the network administrator.

    network={
    	ssid="myssid"
    	psk="mypsk"
    }

## Configure RC Init

Add entries to /etc/rc.conf to configure the network on startup:

    wlans_ral0="wlan0"
    ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"

## Start wireless service

Restart the computer, or restart the network service to connect to the network:

    > service netif restart

# Introduction