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UPGT(4) Device Drivers Manual UPGT(4)

upgtConexant/Intersil PrismGT SoftMAC USB IEEE 802.11b/g wireless network device

upgt* at uhub? port ?

The upgt driver supports the USB 2.0 Conexant/Intersil PrismGT series wireless adapters based on the GW3887 chipset.

These are the modes the upgt driver can operate in:

BSS mode
Also known as 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 upgt 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 upgt driver relies on the software 802.11 stack for both encryption and decryption of data frames.

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

The driver needs a firmware file which is loaded when an interface is brought up:

/etc/firmware/upgt-gw3887
 

A prepackaged version of the firmware, designed to be used with pkg_add(1), can be found at:

http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/upgt-firmware-1.1.tgz

The following adapters should work:

Belkin F5D7050 (version 1000)
 
Cohiba Proto Board
 
D-Link DWL-G120 Cohiba
 
D-Link DWL-G122 rev A2
 
FSC Connect2Air E-5400 USB D1700
 
Gigaset USB Adapter 54
 
Inventel UR045G
 
IOGear GWU513
 
Linksys WUSB54AG
 
Linksys WUSB54G ver 2
 
Medion MD40900
 
Philips CPWUA054
 
SMC EZ ConnectG SMC2862W-G
 
Sagem XG703A
 
Spinnaker DUT
 
Spinnaker Proto Board
 
Thomson SpeedTouch 121g
 

The following hostname.if(5) example configures upgt0 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 upgt0 to join network “my_net” using WPA with passphrase “my_passphrase”:

# ifconfig upgt0 nwid my_net wpakey my_passphrase

Join an existing BSS network, “my_net”:

# ifconfig upgt0 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 nwid my_net

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

The upgt driver first appeared in OpenBSD 4.3.

The upgt driver was written by Marcus Glocker ⟨mglocker@openbsd.org⟩.

The hardware specification was reverse engineered by the people at http://www.prism54.org.

The upgt driver just supports the USB 2.0 devices (GW3887 chipset) but not the USB 1.0 devices containing the NET2280, ISL3880, and ISL3886 chipsets. Some further efforts would be necessary to add USB 1.0 support to the driver.

June 9, 2011 OpenBSD-5.2