WI(4) Kernel Interfaces Manual WI(4)

NAME

wi — WaveLAN/IEEE and PRISM-II 802.11 wireless network driver

SYNOPSIS

wi* at pcmcia? function ?
wi* at pci? dev ? function ?

DESCRIPTION

The wi driver provides support for Lucent Technologies WaveLAN/IEEE PCCARD adapters (also known as WaveLAN II cards) and various PCI/MiniPCI/PCCARD adapters which use Intersil PRISM-II and PRISM-2.5 chipsets. Note that while Lucent sells both ISA and PCMCIA WaveLAN/IEEE devices, the ISA product is actually a PCMCIA card in an ISA to PCMCIA bridge adapter. Consequently, the wi driver is required for both the ISA and PCMCIA NICs. Also note that some of the PRISM-II adapters works only at 3.3V, hence cardbus(4) support is required for those cards to set VCC correctly, even though they are 16-bit cards.

The core of the WaveLAN/IEEE is the Lucent Hermes controller. All host/device interaction is via programmed I/O with the Hermes. The Hermes supports 802.11 and 802.3 frames, power management, BSS, WDS and ad-hoc operation modes. The Silver and the Gold cards of the WaveLAN/IEEE also support WEP. Unlike the other IEEE 802.11 network cards, the WaveLAN Gold cards accept 104 bits key (13 characters) for WEP encryption. The Intersil PRISM-II controller supports WEP as well.

The wi driver encapsulates all traffic as 802.11 frames, however it can receive either 802.11 or 802.3 frames. Transmit speed is selectable between 1Mbps fixed, 2Mbps fixed or 2Mbps with auto fallback. For WaveLAN/IEEE Turbo adapters, speeds up to 6Mbps are available. For WaveLAN/IEEE Turbo 11Mbps adapters and PRISM-II adapters, speeds up to 11Mbps are available.

The wi driver supports configuration of Lucent cards for special ad-hoc operation. In this mode, the nwid is ignored and stations can communicate among each other without the aid of an access point. Note that this mode is specific to Lucent chips, and not in the IEEE 802.11 specification. Due to changes in the implementation of this special ad-hoc mode, Lucent-based cards with different firmware revisions may not interoperate in this mode. This mode is no longer the default and must be selected using the ifconfig(8) (media option “adhoc,flag0”) utility.

Recent versions of Lucent and PRISM-II firmware support IBSS creation. IBSS is the standard IEEE 802.11 ad-hoc mode. In this mode, the nwid should be specified. At least one node must be able to create IBSS. The IBSS mode is enabled by “adhoc” or “ibss” media option. IBSS creation is automatically enabled if supported.

The wi driver defaults to infrastructure mode (i.e., using an access point).

Recent versions of PRISM-II firmware support operating as an 802.11 Access Point. In this mode, the Access Point station should set the nwid. This will create a standard 802.11 network, and the Access Point station will show up in an Access Point scan. This mode is enabled using the “hostap” media option.

For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8) and ifmedia(4).

HARDWARE

Cards supported by the wi driver include:

The original PRISM-I chipset is supported by the awi(4) driver.

DIAGNOSTICS

wi%d: init failed
The WaveLAN failed to come ready after an initialization command was issued.
wi%d: failed to allocate %d bytes on NIC
The driver was unable to allocate memory for transmit frames in the NIC's on-board RAM.
wi%d: device timeout
The WaveLAN failed to generate an interrupt to acknowledge a transmit command.

SEE ALSO

arp(4), ifmedia(4), netintro(4), pci(4), pcmcia(4), ifconfig(8), wiconfig(8)

HCF Light programming specification, http://www.wavelan.com.

HISTORY

The wi device driver first appeared in NetBSD 1.5.

AUTHORS

The wi driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu>.

BUGS

The execution of wiconfig(8) while the interface is down can produce some error messages.
July 6, 2005 NetBSD 6.1