NAME
pgt —
Conexant/Intersil Prism GT Full-MAC
IEEE 802.11a/b/g wireless network device
SYNOPSIS
pgt* at cardbus?
pgt* at pci?
DESCRIPTION
The pgt driver provides support for
Conexant/Intersil GT-series devices which can support the Full-Mac
firmwares, using the ISL3877, ISL3880, and ISL3890 chips. The
pgt driver will not (yet) work on similar devices
using the ISL3886 or similar chips which use the Soft-Mac firmwares.
These are the modes the pgt 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 pgt driver can be configured to use
hardware Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). It is strongly recommended that WEP
not be used as the sole mechanism to secure wireless communication, due to
serious weaknesses in it.
The pgt 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/pgt-isl3877
- /etc/firmware/pgt-isl3890
These firmware files are not free because Conexant 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/pgt-firmware-1.2.tgz
HARDWARE
The following cards are among those supported by the
pgt driver:
| Card | Chip | Bus |
| 3COM 3CRWE154G72 | ISL3880 | CardBus |
| D-Link DWL-g650 A1 | ISL3890 | PCI |
| I-O Data WN-G54/CB | ISL3890 | PCI |
| I4 Z-Com XG-600 | ISL3890 | PCI |
| I4 Z-Com XG-900 | ISL3890 | PCI |
| Intersil PRISM Indigo | ISL3877 | PCI |
| Intersil PRISM Duette | ISL3890 | PCI |
| NETGEAR WG511 (Taiwanese, not Chinese) | ISL3890 | CardBus |
| PLANEX GW-DS54G | ISL3890 | PCI |
| SMC EZ Connect g 2.4GHz SMC2802W | ISL3890 | PCI |
| SMC EZ Connect g 2.4GHz SMC2835W-v2 | ISL3890 | CardBus |
| SMC 2802Wv2 | ISL3890 | PCI |
| Soyo Aerielink | ISL3890 | CardBus |
| ZyXEL ZyAIR G-100 | ISL3890 | CardBus |
EXAMPLES
The following hostname.if(5) example configures pgt0 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 pgt0 for WEP, using hex key “0x1deadbeef1”:
# ifconfig pgt0 nwkey 0x1deadbeef1
Return pgt0 to its default settings:
# ifconfig pgt0 -bssid -chan media autoselect \ nwid "" -nwkey
Join an existing BSS network, “my_net”:
# ifconfig pgt0 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 pgt driver first appeared in
OpenBSD 4.0.
AUTHORS
The pgt driver was originally written for
FreeBSD by Brian
Fundakowski, and then rewritten for OpenBSD
by Marcus Glocker and Claudio
Jeker.
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).