this one is a first for me…setting up a wireless NIC completely from the command line.
step 1 is to make sure your kernel supports the NIC. in this case i have a linksys/cisco ae1000 usb wireless adapter. according to http://wiki.debian.org/rt2800usb, support was added since kernel release 2.6.31 and i’m running 2.6.32 so i should be good there. also it appears a firmware-ralink package is required as well. i have also installed the following packages: wpasupplicant and wireless-tools.