ATW(4) OpenBSD Programmer's Manual ATW(4)NAME
atw - ADMtek ADM8211 IEEE 802.11b wireless network device
SYNOPSIS
atw* at cardbus?
atw* at pci?
DESCRIPTION
The atw driver supports PCI/CardBus 802.11b wireless adapters based on
the ADMtek ADM8211.
The ADM8211 is a bus-mastering 802.11 Media Access Controller (MAC) which
is derived from ADMtek's DEC/Intel 21143 clones (see dc(4) for more
information). It supports contention-free traffic (with an 802.11 Point
Coordinator). The ADM8211 integrates an RF3000 baseband processor (BBP)
by RF Microdevices.
In a typical application, the ADM8211 is coupled with an RF front-end by
RFMD and a Silicon Laboratories Si4126 RF/IF synthesizer.
With the ADM8211, the division of labor between the host and NIC is
different than with firmware-based NICs such as an(4) and wi(4). The
ADM8211 is still responsible for real-time 802.11 functions such as
sending ACK/RTS/CTS/ATIM frames, sending beacons, and answering CF polls
from the access point, but the host takes responsibility for providing
802.11 functions such as scanning, association, and authentication. The
host is also responsible for programming both the BBP and the RF/IF
synthesizer.
These are the modes the atw driver can operate in:
BSS mode Also known as infrastructure mode, this is used when
associating with an access point, through which all
traffic passes. This mode is the default.
IBSS mode Also known as IEEE ad-hoc mode or peer-to-peer mode. This
is the standardized method of operating without an access
point. Stations associate with a service set. However,
actual connections between stations are peer-to-peer.
The atw driver can be configured to use hardware Wired Equivalent Privacy
(WEP) (though see BUGS, below). It is strongly recommended that WEP not
be used as the sole mechanism to secure wireless communication, due to
serious weaknesses in it.
The atw driver can be configured at runtime with ifconfig(8) or on boot
with hostname.if(5).
HARDWARE
The atw driver supports PCI and CardBus cards using revisions 0x11 and
0x15 of the ADM8211 (aka ADM8211A) and revision 0x20 (aka ADM8211B).
This includes:
3Com OfficeConnect 3CRSHPW796 CardBus
Belkin F5D6001 PCI (version 2 only)
Blitz NetWave Point CardBus
D-Link DWL-650 Rev. L1 CardBus
D-Link DWL-520 Rev. C1 PCI
LanReady WP2000 PCI
SMC 2635W CardBus (version 1 only)
TRENDnet TEW-221PC CardBus
Xterasys XN2511B PCI
The atw driver does not yet support cards using revision 0x30 (ADM8211C).
EXAMPLES
The following hostname.if(5) example configures atw0 to join whatever
network is available on boot, using WEP key ``0x1deadbeef1'', channel 11,
obtaining an IP address using DHCP:
dhcp NONE NONE NONE nwkey 0x1deadbeef1 chan 11
Configure atw0 for WEP, using hex key ``0x1deadbeef1'':
# ifconfig atw0 nwkey 0x1deadbeef1
Return atw0 to its default settings:
# ifconfig atw0 -bssid -chan media autoselect \
nwid "" -nwkey
Join an existing BSS network, ``my_net'':
# ifconfig atw0 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 nwid my_net
DIAGNOSTICS
atw0: failed to tune channel %d The driver failed to tune the radio to a
new channel. The radio remains tuned to the old channel.
atw0: atw_si4136_write wrote %08x, SYNCTL still busy The driver waited
100ms without seeing an indication that the ADM8211 had finished writing
a register on the Si4126 RF/IF synthesizer.
atw0: device timeout The ADM8211 failed to generate an interrupt to
acknowledge a transmit command.
SEE ALSOarp(4), cardbus(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pci(4),
hostname.if(5), ifconfig(8)
ADMtek, http://www.admtek.com.tw.
Silicon Laboratories, http://www.silabs.com.
RF Micro Devices, http://www.rfmd.com.
HISTORY
The atw device driver first appeared in OpenBSD 3.6.
AUTHORS
The atw driver was written by David Young <dyoung@NetBSD.org>. For
features which the ADM8211 has in common with the DECchip 21x4x, code was
liberally borrowed from the NetBSD tlp driver by Jason Thorpe
<thorpej@NetBSD.org>.
BUGS
The author does not fully understand what processing the duration fields
for the PLCP header and the 802.11 header undergo before they are applied
to a transmitted frame. If the duration fields in transmitted frames are
incorrect, network performance may suffer.
The driver does not provide rate control when the media type is set to
autoselect.
The driver will sometimes complain that it cannot re-tune the radio
because the transmit process has not gone idle. The author is
investigating.
Many features are still missing, especially WEP decryption and 802.11
power-saving.
The ad-hoc mode has not been rigorously tested. IBSSs with the same SSID
may not coalesce, but this should not matter for most applications.
The driver is untested in the ad-hoc demo mode of Lucent WaveLAN cards.
The ADM8211 supports 802.11 power-saving; however, atw does not support
it yet. For time-bounded service, the ADM8211 will interoperate with an
access point which implements the 802.11 Point Coordination Function;
however, this is also not supported.
Combinations of an ADM8211 with either an Intersil or a Marvell RF front-
end are not supported.
atw contains incomplete support for the ADM8211's WEP
encryption/decryption engine. atw does not yet support hardware WEP
decryption; however, it will use the ADM8211's crypto engine to encrypt
transmitted frames. Documentation from ADMtek claims that, in addition
to the 4 104-bit shared WEP keys, the ADM8211 will store WEP key pairs
for up to 20 peers. The documentation provides no details, hence atw
does not support the 20 key-pairs.
OpenBSD 4.9 September 2, 2009 OpenBSD 4.9
