Enumerating devices, capabilities and interfaces

CLI way

Linux exposes WiFi devices as "phy" entities. WiFi devices by itself do not offer any connectivity. Linux allows creation of network interfaces (the well-known interfaces which could be found using ip link | perl -ne '/\d+:\s+(\w+):/ && print "$1\n";') assigned to corresponding phy's. These network interfaces are in fact used for wireless communication.

To obtain a list of phy's and corresponding network interfaces use iw dev | egrep -i 'phy|Interface|type'.

This article has been tested on:

Owner name	NIC name	Vendor code	Device code	Comment
@foxpy	Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (rev 1a)	8086	2723	Everything is OK
@foxpy	TODO: some old Intel Centrino	TODO	TODO	TODO
@foxpy	TODO: some asus nano-dongle	TODO	TODO	TODO