Why?
If you're Windows o Mac OS X is not configured to connect automatically to your wireless network, it can be a bit tedious to use the GUI in either OS to connect to your WiFi. Here are two commands to connect to a a wife:
Windows:
The netsh command and its subcommands is a powerful way to interact with windows networking subsystem. Follow this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc755301(v=ws.10).aspx for more on this command. Here is how to connect to a WiFi:
The command:
netsh wlan connect name=your_wireless_network_profile_name ssid=your_wireless_network_ssid
If you are not sure about the network profile (normally it's the same as the ssid) you can use netsh command to list all profile:
netsh wlan show profiles
If you want to see the available networks then use:
netsh wlan show networks
Netsh is a great command and can do a lot more.
Mac OS X:
The networksetup command is a powerful command in the Mac OS X environment to deal with network setup.
To connect to a wireless network for example:
networksetup -setairportnetwork hardware_port your_wireless_network_ssid your_password
A typical value for hardware_port (wireless) is en1 (ethernet interface # 1).
There is more to this command for sure.
