Posts Tagged ‘wireless’

Wireless adapter for Windows Server 2003 and 2008

November 30th, 2009

There are plenty of wireless adapter(USB/PCI) that work on Windows XP and Vista without a problem(most of the time). But I have yet to find one that officially supports Windows Server 2003 or 2008. It’s not uncommon to use one only to end up with repeated BSOD’s. I don’t think the administrator is going to be happy with ‘just reboot the server’.

Yes, this assumes you have no way of using wires.

An unstable driver is not something that should be impacting server performance. Since I’ve given up all hope of ever finding supported drivers I had to come up with an alternative solution.

The solution

Meet the Linksys WRT54GL and the open source firmware Tomato. The same combination that delivers a stable router can also be used to act as a wireless client.

Wireless Client

You are not limited to the WRT54GL, you can use any device that supports the wireless client feature

The wireless device will no longer act as a router but as an adapter for any devices that need wireless connectivity by receiving the signal and allowing wired devices to connect to the AP, think of it as a bridge.

Tomato Wireless Client

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Connect To An Access Point From The Command Line Linux

December 8th, 2008

Running a headless server presents several challenges, networking is not one of them. In this case I have a headless server with a USB wireless adapter and I wish to connect to the nearest access point.

The wireless interface has to be activated, in this case I am using Ubuntu and the interface name is wlan0, keep in mind that the name may change on Backtrack the same wireless adapter appears under a different name rusb0.

Activate the wireless interface

Let’s bring the interface wlan0 up.

ifconfig wlan0 up

Scan for the wireless network you wish to connect.

sudo iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:19:5B:0C:30:CA
                    ESSID:"wireless"
                    Mode:Master
                    Channel:6
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality=47/100  Signal level:-76 dBm 
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
                              12 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
                              48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Extra:tsf=0000010b1bfe2181
                    Extra: Last beacon: 28ms ago

After we take note of the target ESSID we associate our wireless adapter to the AP. In this case the AP has no encryption.

iwconfig wlan0 essid "wireless"

Last but no least we need to request an IP address from the server, if using static IP ignored this command.

sudo dhclient wlan0
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 9738
killed old client process, removed PID file
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.1
Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/
 
wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:1f:c6:18:66:fd
Sending on   LPF/wlan0/00:1f:c6:18:66:fd
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.1.104 on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK of 192.168.1.104 from 192.168.1.1
bound to 192.168.1.104 -- renewal in 40459 seconds.

In case the AP requires a key, issue the following.

iwconfig wlan0 key ABCD-ABCD-ABCD-ABCD

Now just check the wireless adapter status.

ifconfig

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Ralink Wireless Chipsets And Backtrack.

October 1st, 2008

Perhaps the most common question at the Remote-Explot forums is.

What USB adaptors work on Backtrack?

Which may either be received with a please Google for the answer or some hostility for not reading the newbie area first.

My aswer to this question is not to ask for just the specific adapter but also for the wireless chipset. Atheros is one of the preferred choices because of it’s open approach which makes them favorable for developer support of various testing tools.

But in my case I am always on a budget and I prefer to but the wireless USB dongles that have the chipsets made Ralink, I will admit that they suffer from temperamental issues please keep that in mind when buying one.

And for an exact model I won an Asus WL 167G which cost me around $25 dollars on Newegg.com. ASUS WL-167g (version 2) later I made some hardware modifications to add an external antenna in order to gain more range.

I suggest you look at the more detailed list provided by Offensive-security.org.

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