Hari's Corner

This is more a quick reminder to myself as much as a tip to anybody who happens to find this information useful. If you find that your wireless networking doesn't work even if your Wireless chipset driver is compiled into the kernel, make sure your kernel actually supports the IEEE 802.11 stack. I found that it's better that these options are built-in rather than as kernel modules. Choosing to build in support right into the kernel, rather than compiling as modules seems to work better for me.

To configure the wireless networking support in the kernel, you need to enable it in the Networking -> Wireless menu of make xconfig or make menconfig utility. Make sure you enable all the options as highlighted in the screenshot below (taken while configuring a custom kernel 2.6.25.20):

Now after you finish compiling your kernel and reboot (provided everything else is configured fine), your wireless network should work (almost) flawlessly.