NAME
otus
—
Atheros USB IEEE 802.11a/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 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 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:
- /etc/firmware/otus-init
- /etc/firmware/otus-main
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:
- 3Com 3CRUSBN275
- Arcadyan WN7512
- CACE AirPcap Nx
- D-Link DWA-130 rev D1
- D-Link DWA-160 rev A1
- D-Link DWA-160 rev A2
- IO-Data WN-GDN/US2
- NEC Aterm WL300NU-G
- Netgear WNDA3100
- Netgear WN111 v2
- Planex GW-US300
- SMC Networks SMCWUSB-N2
- TP-Link TL-WN821N
- Ubiquiti SR71 USB
- Unex DNUA-81
- Z-Com UB81
- Z-Com UB82
- ZyXEL NWD-271N
EXAMPLES
The following example scans for available networks:
# ifconfig otus0 scan
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
- otus%d: error %d, could not read firmware %s
- For some reason, the driver was unable to read the microcode file from the filesystem. The file might be missing or corrupted.
- otus%d: 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@openbsd.org⟩
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.