Due to the relative complexity of requiring several separate commands for one task (e.g. iwlist and iwconfig to find and sync with a wireless access point), some[2] recommend using frontends provided by GNOME and KDE, or an application called NetGo, to manipulate these settings.
The Linux kernel authors consider wireless tools package deprecated;[3] the alternative being the more recent iw utility.
ifrename must be run before interfaces are brought up, which is why it's mostly useful in various scripts (init, hotplug) but is seldom used directly by the user.
In the free Berkeley Software Distribution UNIX operating systems, the role of iwconfig is performed by an expanded ifconfig command.
iwevent displays wireless events generated by drivers and setting changes that are received through the RTNetlink socket.
The command is primarily used to generate a list of nearby wireless access points and their MAC addresses and SSIDs.
It is used to manipulate parameters and setting of the Wireless Extension specific to each driver (as opposed to iwconfig which deals with generic ones).
This information is updated each time a new packet is received, so each address of the list adds some overhead in the driver.