/etc/network/interfaces

[Jason White]

Gregory Nowak <greg at gregn.net> wrote:
> It's been a while since I had access to multiple networks. From what I
> recall, each connection requires its own wlan0 configuration block
> (I.E. you can't have multiple network configurations for the same wlan
> interface). You also can't have multiple wlan0 interfaces defined at
> the same time, or you'll get an error.
> 

My recollection is that you can label the connections in the interfaces file,
and then bring up the right connection manually with the ifup command.
> My quick and dirty work around was to comment out the network I didn't
> want to use, and to uncomment the one I did. If you don't want to play
> with commenting and uncommenting your interfaces file every time you
> want to connect to a different network, then wpasupplicant can be
> configured to connect to multiple networks, and to prefer one over
> another if they are both in range. Have a look at the wpa_supplicant,
> and wpa_supplicant.conf man pages. Oh yes, and from what I recall,
> wpasupplicant does integrate nicely with your interfaces file.

It's the right tool to use for wireless networks, especially if they're using
WPa 2, as they should be for security reasons.