Refreshing the wireless network list?

10.04 wireless usability

23,143

The best way to refresh the list is to go to the command line and type:

sudo iwlist wlan0 scan

Assuming your wifi is called wlan0 (it might be wlan0 or something else) see ifconfig for details.

On newer versions of Ubuntu you can leave out the wifi name and it will scan all wireless cards:

sudo iwlist scan

This command will refresh the list by asking the wifi to rescan. You can only do this as root and if you do it as non-root it will simply print the list of known networks without refreshing.

23,143

Adam Matan

Team leader, developer, and public speaker. I build end-to-end apps using modern cloud infrastructure, especially serverless tools. My current position is R&D Manager at Corvid by Wix.com, a serverless platform for rapid web app generation. My CV and contact details are available on my Github README.

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

Adam Matan over 1 year

When I wake up my laptop (Ubuntu 10.04) from suspension, it does not recognize the available wireless networks. The only way to refresh the list is to disable wireless networking, and than enable it.

Any idea how to force a refresh on the list of wireless networks?
- user4124 over 13 years
  
  All wireless cards are not equal. Depends on the wireless card. Which one do you have?
Chloe over 7 years

That didn't make the system toolbar work again. It still shows 0 networks in the GUI.
Satya Prakash about 7 years

Mine used to give some problem time to time. I used sudo iwlist scan on Ubuntu 16. It worked. Available Wifi got listed. Thsi saved me restart.