Network Connectivity Hardware
Almost any network interface card (NIC) supported by the &arch-kernel; kernel
should also be supported by the installation system; drivers
should normally be loaded automatically.
This includes most PCI/PCI-Express cards as well as
PCMCIA/Express Cards on laptops.
Many older ISA cards are supported as well.
The list of supported network devices is:
Channel to Channel (CTC) and ESCON connection (real or emulated)
OSA-2 Token Ring/Ethernet and OSA-Express Fast Ethernet (non-QDIO)
OSA-Express in QDIO mode, HiperSockets and Guest-LANs
On &arch-title;, most built-in Ethernet devices are supported and modules
for additional PCI and USB devices are provided.
ISDN is supported, but not during the installation.
Wireless Network Cards
Wireless networking is in general supported as well and a growing number of
wireless adapters are supported by the official &arch-kernel; kernel, although many
of them do require firmware to be loaded.
If firmware is needed, the installer
will prompt you to load firmware. See
for detailed information on how to load firmware during the installation.
Wireless NICs that are not supported by the official &arch-kernel; kernel can generally
be made to work under &debian-gnu;, but are not supported during the installation.
If there is a problem with wireless and there
is no other NIC you can use during the installation, it is still
possible to install &debian-gnu; using a full CD-ROM or DVD image. Select the
option to not configure a network and install using only the packages
available from the CD/DVD. You can then install the driver and firmware you
need after the installation is completed (after the reboot) and configure
your network manually.
In some cases the driver you need may not be available as a &debian; package.
You will then have to look if there is source code available in the internet
and compile the driver yourself. How to do this is outside the scope of this
manual.
If no Linux driver is available, your last resort is to
use the ndiswrapper package, which allows you to use
a Windows driver.