freebsd-dev/share/man/man4/awi.4
2004-06-16 08:33:57 +00:00

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.\" $NetBSD: awi.4,v 1.6 2000/03/22 11:24:33 onoe Exp $
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd October 31, 1999
.Dt AWI 4
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm awi
.Nd "AMD PCnetMobile IEEE 802.11 PCMCIA wireless network driver"
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Cd "device awi"
.Cd "device wlan"
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
driver supports various IEEE 802.11 wireless cards
which run AMD PCnetMobile firmware based on AMD 79c930 controller
with Intersil (formerly Harris) PRISM radio chipset.
It provides access to 32kb of memory shared between the controller
and the host.
All host/device interaction is via this shared memory, which can be
accessed either via PCMCIA memory space or I/O space.
The
.Nm
driver encapsulates all IP and ARP traffic as 802.11 frames.
.Pp
The driver works both in infrastructure mode and in adhoc (independent
BSS) mode.
.Pp
In infrastructure mode, it communicates with an Access Point
which serves as a link-layer bridge between an Ethernet and
the wireless network.
An access point also provides roaming capability
which allows wireless nodes to move between access points.
.Pp
In adhoc mode, it communicates peer to peer.
Though it is more efficient to communicate between wireless nodes,
the coverage is limited spatially due to lack of roaming capability.
.Pp
In addition to these two modes in the IEEE 802.11 specification, the
.Nm
driver also supports a variant of adhoc mode out of spec for DS radio cards,
which makes it possible to communicate with adhoc mode of
.Xr wi 8
driver.
The NWID doesn't affect in this mode.
.Pp
For more information on configuring this device, see
.Xr ifconfig 8 .
.Sh HARDWARE
Cards supported by the
.Nm
driver include:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width BayStack_650x -offset indent
.It BayStack 650
1Mbps Frequency Hopping PCCARD adapter
.It BayStack 660
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
.It Icom SL-200
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
.It Melco WLI-PCM
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
.It NEL SSMagic
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
.It Netwave AirSurfer Plus
1Mbps Frequency Hopping PCCARD adapter
.It Netwave AirSurfer Pro
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
.It Nokia C020 WLAN
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
.It Farallon SkyLINE
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
.El
.Pp
The original Xircom Netwave AirSurfer is supported by the
.Xr cnw 4
driver.
.Sh MEDIA SELECTION
The DS cards support
.Em DS1
and
.Em DS2
media types, while the FH cards support
.Em FH1
media type.
For each media type,
.Em adhoc
mediaopt can be used to indicate the driver to operate in adhoc mode.
For DS radio cards,
.Em adhoc , Ns Em flag0
mediaopt can be used for
.Xr wi 4
compatible adhoc mode.
In addition to these station modes,
.Em hostap
mediaopt can be used to create a host-based access point.
.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
.Bl -diag
.It "awi0: awi_pccard_probe: bad banner:"
The device failed to initialize its firmware.
.It "awi0: failed to complete selftest (%s)"
The device failed to complete its self test.
In some circumstances, resetting device after power on fails.
Re-inserting the card or down-then-up interface may be helpful.
.It "awi0: transmit timeout"
The device failed to generate an interrupt to acknowledge a
transmitted packet.
.It "awi0: failed to lock interrupt"
The system was unable to obtain the lock to access shared memory.
.It "awi0: command %d failed %x"
The device failed to complete the request from the system.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr arp 4 ,
.Xr card 4 ,
.Xr cnw 4 ,
.Xr miibus 4 ,
.Xr netintro 4 ,
.Xr pccard 4 ,
.Xr wi 4 ,
.Xr wlan 4 ,
.Xr ifconfig 8
.Rs
.%T Am79C930 PCnet Mobile Single-Chip Wireless LAN Media Access Controller
.%O http://www.amd.com
.Re
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
device driver first appeared in
.Nx 1.5 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
The initial version of the
.Nm
driver was written by
.An Bill Sommerfeld Aq sommerfeld@netbsd.org .
Then the
.Nm
driver module was completely rewritten to support cards with DS phy and
to support adhoc mode by
.An Atsushi Onoe Aq onoe@netbsd.org .