[GLLUG] Wireless Device Names

[Chick Tower]

I was helping Ben configure wireless on one of his laptops on Monday. 
(Yes, we met behind your backs.)  The laptop uses an Intel Pro Wireless 
chip, and a Broadcom Ethernet chip.  When we tried to bring up wlan0, if 
failed.  Luckily, an internet search provided an example of configuring 
one using the device name eth1.  That surprised me, but it worked.

Now to my question.  Is there some way to determine, from information on 
the PC itself and the installed programs, what the name of the wireless 
(or any) device is needed?  I searched through dmesg for the basename of 
the driver, ipw2200, and it found several lines, but none of them 
specified a device name.  The dmesg lines for the Ethernet device did 
show it at eth0.  Does it requure searching through the source code of 
the driver, or perhaps the kernel, to tell what name a device responds to?
-- 

                                Chick