Can one “wpa_supplicant” support Ethernet LAN and WLAN?

Question

The product I’m working on supports Ethernet only, and we are planning to support WLAN as well. I’m trying to figure out whether same wpa_supplicant can support both of Ethernet and WLAN or we have to have two separate wpa_supplicants for Ethernet and WLAN, has anybody tried the similar thing before?

Answer 1

I haven't tried it myself but I would expect it to work. Setting up wpa_supplicant for two interfaces is covered here: wpa_supplicant for dual WLAN

…but that's an example with two WLANs, not one WLAN and one LAN.

To set up wpa_supplicant for a wired Ethernet LAN, I believe you have to add "-D wired" to your WPAOPTS, and ap_scan=0, for that interface. But you can find documentation for that elsewhere.

Answer 2

wpa_supplicant is a component that implements key negotiation with a WPA Authenticator and it controls the roaming and IEEE 802.11 authentication/association of the wlan driver.

It is designed to be a “daemon” acting as the backend component controlling the wireless connection.

It has nothing to do on Ethernet.