IPW(4) OpenBSD Programmer's Manual IPW(4)NAMEipw - Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 IEEE 802.11b wireless network device
SYNOPSIS
ipw* at pci?
DESCRIPTION
The ipw driver provides support for the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Mini PCI
network adapter.
These are the modes the ipw 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.
monitor mode In this mode the driver is able to receive packets without
associating with an access point. This disables the
internal receive filter and enables the card to capture
packets from networks which it wouldn't normally have
access to, or to scan for access points.
The ipw driver can be configured to use Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) or
Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK). WPA is the de facto
encryption standard for wireless networks. It is strongly recommended
that WEP not be used as the sole mechanism to secure wireless
communication, due to serious weaknesses in it. The ipw driver relies on
the software 802.11 stack for both encryption and decryption of data
frames.
The ipw driver can be configured at runtime with ifconfig(8) or on boot
with hostname.if(5).
FILES
The driver needs at least version 1.3 of the following firmware files,
which are loaded when an interface is brought up:
/etc/firmware/ipw-bss
/etc/firmware/ipw-ibss
/etc/firmware/ipw-monitor
These firmware files are not free because Intel refuses to grant
distribution rights without contractual obligations. As a result, even
though OpenBSD includes the driver, the firmware files cannot be included
and users have to find these files on their own. The official person to
state your views to about this issue is majid.awad@intel.com.
A prepackaged version of the firmware, designed to be used with
pkg_add(1), can be found at:
http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/packages/openbsd/ipw-firmware-1.3p0.tgz
EXAMPLES
The following hostname.if(5) example configures ipw0 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 ipw0 to join network ``my_net'' using WPA with passphrase
``my_passphrase'':
# ifconfig ipw0 nwid my_net wpakey my_passphrase
Join an existing BSS network, ``my_net'':
# ifconfig ipw0 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 nwid my_net
DIAGNOSTICS
ipw%d: device timeout The driver will reset the hardware. This should
not happen.
ipw%d: error %d, could not read firmware %s For some reason, the driver
was unable to read the firmware image from the filesystem. The file
might be missing or corrupted.
SEE ALSOarp(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pci(4), hostname.if(5),
ifconfig(8)AUTHORS
The ipw driver was written by Damien Bergamini <damien@openbsd.org>.
OpenBSD 4.9 November 1, 2010 OpenBSD 4.9
