NAME
acx
—
TI ACX100/ACX111 IEEE 802.11a/b/g
wireless network device
SYNOPSIS
acx* at cardbus?
acx* at pci?
DESCRIPTION
The acx
driver provides support for TI
TNETW1100/TNETW1100B (ACX100) and TNETW1130 (ACX111) based PCI/CardBus
network adapters.
The ACX100A and ACX100B are first generation 802.11b devices from TI. The ACX111 is a second generation device which supports 802.11b/g and in some cases 802.11a.
These are the modes the acx
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.
- Host AP
- In this mode the driver acts as an access point (base station) for other cards.
- 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 acx
driver can be configured to use
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) in software for ACX111 or in hardware for
ACX100. It is strongly recommended that WEP not be used as the sole
mechanism to secure wireless communication, due to serious weaknesses in
it.
The transmit speed is user-selectable or can be adapted automatically by the driver depending on the number of hardware transmission retries.
The acx
driver can be configured at
runtime with
ifconfig(8) or on boot with
hostname.if(5).
FILES
The driver needs a set of firmware files which are loaded when an interface is brought up:
- /etc/firmware/tiacx100
- /etc/firmware/tiacx100r0D
- /etc/firmware/tiacx100r11
- /etc/firmware/tiacx111
- /etc/firmware/tiacx111c16
- /etc/firmware/tiacx111r16
These firmware files are not free because TI refuses to grant distribution rights. In fact they have rebuffed thousands of attempts to start a dialogue on this issue. As a result, even though OpenBSD includes the driver, the firmware files cannot be included and users have to download these files on their own.
A prepackaged version of the firmware, designed to be used with pkg_add(1), can be found at:
http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/acx-firmware-1.4.tgz
HARDWARE
The following cards are among those supported by the
acx
driver:
Card | Chip | Bus | Standard |
D-Link DWL-520+ | ACX100 | PCI | b |
D-Link DWL-650+ | ACX100 | CardBus | b |
D-Link DWL-G520+ | ACX111 | PCI | b/g |
D-Link DWL-G630+ | ACX111 | CardBus | b/g |
D-Link DWL-G650+ | ACX111 | CardBus | b/g |
Digitus DN-7001G | ACX111 | CardBus | b/g |
Ergenic ERG WL-003 | ACX100 | CardBus | b |
Hamlet HNWP254 | ACX111 | CardBus | b/g |
Hawking HWP54G | ACX111 | PCI | b/g |
Linksys WPC54Gv2 | ACX111 | CardBus | b/g |
Microcom Travelcard | ACX111 | CardBus | b/g |
Netgear WG311v2 | ACX111 | PCI | b/g |
Sceptre SC254W+ | ACX111 | CardBus | b/g |
Tornado/ADT 211g | ACX111 | PCI | b/g |
USR USR5410 | ACX111 | CardBus | b/g |
USR USR5416 | ACX111 | PCI | b/g |
ZyXEL G-160 | ACX111 | CardBus | b/g |
ZyXEL G-360 EE | ACX111 | PCI | b/g |
EXAMPLES
The following hostname.if(5) example configures acx0 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
The following hostname.if(5) example creates a host-based access point on boot:
inet 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 NONE media autoselect \ mediaopt hostap nwid my_net chan 11
Configure acx0 for WEP, using hex key “0x1deadbeef1”:
# ifconfig acx0 nwkey 0x1deadbeef1
Return acx0 to its default settings:
# ifconfig acx0 -bssid -chan media autoselect \ nwid "" -nwkey
Join an existing BSS network, “my_net”:
# ifconfig acx0 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 nwid my_net
SEE ALSO
arp(4), cardbus(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pci(4), hostname.if(5), hostapd(8), ifconfig(8)
HISTORY
The acx
driver first appeared in
OpenBSD 4.0.
AUTHORS
The acx
driver was written by
Sepherosa Ziehau. The manual page was written by
Sascha Wildner. Both are based on the
http://wlan.kewl.org project team's original
code.
The hardware specification was reverse engineered by the good folks at http://acx100.sourceforge.net. Without them this driver would not have been possible.
CAVEATS
Host AP mode doesn't support power saving. Clients attempting to use power saving mode may experience significant packet loss (disabling power saving on the client will fix this).