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NAME

otus — Atheros USB IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n wireless network device

SYNOPSIS

otus* at uhub? port ?

DESCRIPTION

The otus driver supports USB 2.0 wireless network devices based on Atheros Communications AR9001U chipset.

The AR9001U chipset is made of an AR9170 MAC/Baseband and an AR9101 (1T2R), AR9102 (2T2R) or AR9104 (dual-band 2T2R) Radio.

These are the modes the otus 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.

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 otus driver can be configured to use Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK). WPA is the current encryption standard for wireless networks. It is strongly recommended that WEP not be used as the sole mechanism to secure wireless communication, due to serious weaknesses in it.

The otus driver can be configured at runtime with ifconfig(8) or on boot with hostname.if(5).

FILES

The driver needs at least version 1.0 of the following firmware files, which are loaded when an interface is attached:

Although these firmware files are freely redistributable, their usage is restricted. A prepackaged version of the firmware can be installed using fw_update(1).

HARDWARE

The following adapters should work:

EXAMPLES

The following example scans for available networks:

The following hostname.if(5) example configures otus0 to join network “mynwid”, using WPA key “mywpakey”, obtaining an IP address using DHCP:

nwid mynwid
wpakey mywpakey
dhcp

DIAGNOSTICS

otus0: error N, could not read firmware ...

For some reason, the driver was unable to read the microcode file from the filesystem. The file might be missing or corrupted.

otus0: device timeout

A frame dispatched to the hardware for transmission did not complete in time. The driver will reset the hardware. This should not happen.

SEE ALSO

arp(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), usb(4), hostname.if(5), ifconfig(8)

HISTORY

The otus driver first appeared in OpenBSD 4.6.

AUTHORS

The otus driver was written by Damien Bergamini <damien.bergamini@free.fr> based on source code licensed under the ISC released in 2008 by Atheros Communications for Linux.

CAVEATS

The AVM FRITZ!WLAN USB Stick N adapter is currently not supported.

The otus driver does not support any of the 802.11n capabilities offered by the AR9001U chipset. Additional work is required in ieee80211(9) before those features can be supported.