Wireless interface confusion
 

I've noticed that when I use different wireless cards and issue the iwconfig command I either get eth0, eth1, etc... or wlan0, wlan1, etc... (at least what appear to be the most common) or sometimes a combination of both depending upon if I have more than one card inserted.

I'm guessing that ethx and wlanx are selected based upon the chipset/driver combination. Is there a way to convert the wireless interface from ethx to wlanx or vice versa by using different drivers?

I know with the Prism2/2.5/3 chipsets they default to wlan0 when the iwconfig command is issued since they use hostap drivers or wlan drivers.

I'm a little confused here is all and I would appreciate some clarification.

Thank you.

You can use aliases.

In /etc/modprobe.conf you can set which card should be eth0, etc. For example in mine I have:

Thank you for the reply.

If I understand correctly the labels eth0 and wlan0 are labels.

Am I correct in assuming that if I wanted to I could modify the modprobe.conf file and call my interface xyz0 if I so desired?

I wouldn't like to say, I'm not 100% sure how it is implemented. Try it and see, if it doesn't work you can always undo your changes

Okay, I'll give it a try!

Thank you for your help.

I've been doing some more reading and it appears that for a device to show up as wlan0, wlan1, etc... that an additional package is required to be installed.

I gather that if a wireless NIC is installed that ethx is the default.

Is my assumption correct?