NAME
iwi —
Intel PRO/Wireless
2200BG/2225BG/2915ABG IEEE 802.11a/b/g wireless network device
SYNOPSIS
iwi* at pci?
DESCRIPTION
The iwi driver provides support for Intel
PRO/Wireless 2200BG/2915ABG Mini PCI and 2225BG PCI network adapters.
These are the modes the iwi 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.
- 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 iwi driver can be configured to use
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA-PSK and
WPA2-PSK). WPA is the de facto 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
iwi driver relies on the software 802.11 stack for
both encryption and decryption of data frames.
The iwi driver can be configured at
runtime with
ifconfig(8) or on boot with
hostname.if(5).
FILES
The driver needs at least version 3.1 of the following firmware files, which are loaded when an interface is brought up:
- /etc/firmware/iwi-bss
- /etc/firmware/iwi-ibss
- /etc/firmware/iwi-monitor
These firmware files are not free because Intel refuses to grant distribution rights without contractual obligations. 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. The official person to state your views to about this issue is majid.awad@intel.com.
A prepackaged version of the firmware, designed to be used with pkg_add(1), can be found at:
http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/iwi-firmware-3.1.tgz
EXAMPLES
The following hostname.if(5) example configures iwi0 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
Configure iwi0 to join network “my_net” using WPA with passphrase “my_passphrase”:
# ifconfig iwi0 nwid my_net wpakey my_passphrase
Join an existing BSS network, “my_net”:
# ifconfig iwi0 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 nwid my_net
DIAGNOSTICS
- iwi%d: device timeout
- The driver will reset the hardware. This should not happen.
- iwi%d: error %d, could not read firmware %s
- For some reason, the driver was unable to read the firmware image from the filesystem. The file might be missing or corrupted.
SEE ALSO
pkg_add(1), arp(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pci(4), hostname.if(5), ifconfig(8)
AUTHORS
The iwi driver was written by
Damien Bergamini
⟨damien@openbsd.org⟩.