Re: WLAN support

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To: Sam Leffler <sam@errno.com>
Date: 31 May 2003 09:30:45 +0200

Hi,

This sounds very interesting - I do hope you find time to look more into
this soon. I'm also planning an upgrade of my WLAN, and 802.11a and g
are both being considered. If you do not have time to find and fix these
problems, perhaps someone else?

/Eirik

On Fri, 2003-05-30 at 21:44, Sam Leffler wrote:
> > > I've got a list of possible WLAN NICs and am wondering if somebody
> > > has any experience using one of them with FreeBSD 4.x?
> > >
> > > Netgear WG511 (Cardbus) or WAG511 (Cardbus, 5 + 2.4 GHz)
> > > SMC 2802W (PCI) or 2835W (Cardbus)
> > > D-Link DWL G520 (PCI) or DWL G650 (Cardbus)
> > > Belkin 802.11g/+ (don't have a product name by hand, PN PCI:
> > > F5D7000, PN Cardbus: F5D7010 - not yet on market)
> > >
> > > All of these cards are 802.11g devices (54 MBit/s).
> > >
> > > What about support on FreeBSD for these devices? Any experience?
> >
> > Eliminate any 802.11g cards Any card that supports this is not going to
> > work. The reason is legal. Those cards may be programmed to operate
> > an any of a wide range of frequencies and powers and any release of the
> > register definitions could result in transmissions on frequencies not
> > allowed in that location. This could result in large penalties to the
> > manufacturer, so they will only release the specs under an NDA that is
> > totally incompatible with open source. In the industry there has been
> > talk of cryptographic techniques for setting such things, but there are
> > not current or near future products that will support this.
> >
> > I read a good article on this about a month ago, but I don't remember
> > where. I think I got the pointer on /.
> >
>
> Sorry, but this is wrong. There is _one_ manufacturer of wireless parts
> that has a radio of the sort you describe. Other manufacturers control
> their radios entirely on the card and are not releasing programming details
> for reasons other than FCC compliance.
>
> > > I would like to setup one FreeBSD box (4.7 / 4.8 or even 5.0/5.1)
> > > as a router and have at least one notebook connected wireless
> > > (running both Win2k and FreeBSD).
> > >
> > > As I was reading that the high speed wireless devices are having a
> > > better operating range compared to 802.11b devices, I don't want to
> > > install 802.11b devices.
> >
> > Sorry. Maybe some day, but not any time soon.
>
> I've had a "working" driver for Atheros hardware for several months now but
> am unable to make it available because of a bug that renders it unusable in
> noisy environments. This is not a problem with the hardware. This is a
> problem in my code that has been very very difficult to identify. The
> driver supports all Atheros products used in 11a, 11a+b, and 11a+b+g cardbus
> and mini-pci cards. The driver is for 5.x systems and is unlikely to ever
> be backported to 4.x because it depends on many changes in the network
> infrastructure. Until then folks are pretty much stuck with 11b cards based
> on chips from Intersil.
>
> Sam
>
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