Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 12:12:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Bill Paul <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> To: hackers@freebsd.org, hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Call for testers: Aironet wireless adapters Message-ID: <199909141612.MAA19753@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu>
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This is a call for testers for users with Aironet 4500 or 4800 series wireless adapters. A device driver for these NICs is now available. PCMCIA, PCI and ISA devices should all be supported. Note however that I personally only have access to the 4800 series cards so I may have missed some of the PCI and/or ISA Plug and Play IDs for the 4500 cards. The Aironet cards are 802.11 devices. The 4500 series cards have a maximum data rate of 2Mbps. The 4800 series have a maximum speed of 11Mbps, or so they claim. In my tests, I tend to see around 600KB/sec (kilobytes per second). This is in ad-hoc mode only; I don't know if infrastructure mode would be faster since I don't have an access point. Driver support is currently available for FreeBSD 3.2 and up. I plan to make a 4.0 driver once the plug and play code in -current settles down a little. The driver is available aT: http://www.freebsd.org/~wpaul/Aironet There is a README which explains how to add the driver to an existing system and configure a new kernel. Pay careful attention to the step marked *IMPORTANT* if you have a PCMCIA card: you must make a small change to /sys/pccard/pccard.c in order to get the PCMCIA card activated correctly (you have to apply +5 volts to the vpp1 and vpp2 pins, which FreeBSD doesn't do by default). The Aironet ISA and PCI cards appear to the host as ordinary ISA or PCI devices. This is a big improvement over the WaveLAN/IEEE ISA card which looks like a PCMCIA controller with a PCMCIA card inserted, and required pccard support even on a desktop system. The ISA card can be set for Plug and Play mode or hard-wired to a particular I/O address or IRQ; the driver supports both modes. If your system supports ISA Plug and Play devices, then it should "just work" without any tweaking. Sharp-eyed readers may notice a striking similarity between the Aironet driver code and the WaveLAN code. Strangely, they have very similar programming interfaces. I don't know why. Note that the Aironet supports multicast reception, but it has no multicast filter: the only possible option is 'receive all multicasts' mode. Also, promiscuous mode only seems to work when the NIC is in infrastructure mode, not in ad-hoc mode. Also, unlike the WaveLAN/IEEE cards, Aironet stations in ad-hoc mode must be on the same SSID in order to communicate. This can be done with the ancontrol utility (i.e. ancontrol -i an0 -n "MY_NETWORK"). As usual, report problems or send free large bags of cash to wpaul@skynet.columbia.edu. Include lots of details. -Bill -- ============================================================================= -Bill Paul (212) 854-6020 | System Manager, Master of Unix-Fu Work: wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research Home: wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City ============================================================================= "It is not I who am crazy; it is I who am mad!" - Ren Hoek, "Space Madness" ============================================================================= To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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