# Important wireless networking change in FreeBSD 8



## DutchDaemon (Nov 28, 2009)

From the Release Notes:



> The wireless network support layer (net80211) now uses pseudo-interfaces named as wlanN instead of a device driver name like em0 directly. The wlanN interface is created by ifconfig(8) as an instance of the parent interface and used for actual communication similar to vlan(4), IEEE 802.1Q VLAN network interface. Note that multiple instances (to realize multiple BSSes with a single AP device, for example) can be created if the parent interface supports it. For more details, see ifconfig(8) manual page.



If you're unsure whether (and how) this applies to your wireless network, consult the EXAMPLES section of the manual for your driver, e.g. ath(4), ral(4), wpi(4), etcetera. See also wlan(4).

Typical ifconfig(8) commands look like this:

```
* ifconfig wlan0 create wlandev ral0 inet 192.168.0.20 netmask 255.255.255.0
* ifconfig wlan0 create wlandev ath0 wlanmode hostap [....]
* ifconfig wlan0 create wlandev wpi0 inet 192.168.0.20 netmask 255.255.255.0

etc.
```


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