Wireless Network Connection via CLI

For the past few years, I have been using my trusty D-Link DWA-125 wireless dongle on my PC to connect to a wireless network. I have written about how to connect to WiFi via the command line but that was for unsecured networks. Recently, I've been fumbling around with Debian and did a minimal netinstall (to build it up with a GUI desktop) -- sort of a "from scratch" installation, like how Arch Linux installation is done. Since netinstall without a desktop environment drops you off at the CLI on first boot, I needed to find a way to connect to a WiFi network without the use of GUI network managers.

Setting up a wireless nework connection via command line

Update: These commands only works for unsecured SSIDs, apparently (and obviously).

Having set up a working wireless connection to the network, it was time to get it connected. I decided to use the command line way to connect to the network.

[usr@host ~]$ su -
Password:
[usr@host ~]# ifconfig <interface> down
[usr@host ~]# dhclient -r <interface>
[usr@host ~]# ifconfig <interface> up
[usr@host ~]# iwconfig <interface> essid "<essid_in_quotes>"
[usr@host ~]# iwconfig <interface> mode Managed
[usr@host ~]# dhclient <interface>