NAME
ural
—
Ralink Technology USB IEEE 802.11b/g
wireless network device
SYNOPSIS
ural* at uhub? port ?
DESCRIPTION
The ural
driver supports USB 2.0 wireless
adapters based on the Ralink RT2500USB chipset.
The RT2500USB chipset is the first generation of 802.11b/g adapters from Ralink. It consists of two integrated chips, an RT2570 MAC/BBP and an RT2526 radio transceiver.
These are the modes the ural
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 ural
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
ural
driver relies on the software 802.11 stack for
both encryption and decryption of data frames.
The transmit speed is user-selectable or can be adapted automatically by the driver depending on the number of hardware transmission retries.
The ural
driver can be configured at
runtime with
ifconfig(8) or on boot with
hostname.if(5).
HARDWARE
The following adapters should work:
- AMIT WL532U
- ASUS WL-167g v1
- Belkin F5D7050 v2000
- Buffalo WLI-U2-KG54
- Buffalo WLI-U2-KG54-AI
- Buffalo WLI-U2-KG54-YB
- CNet CWD-854
- Compex WLU54G 2A1100
- Conceptronic C54RU
- D-Link DWL-G122 (b1)
- Dynalink WLG25USB
- E-Tech WGUS02
- Eminent EM3035
- Gigabyte GN-WBKG
- Hercules HWGUSB2-54
- KCORP LifeStyle KLS-685
- Linksys HU200-TS
- Linksys WUSB54G v4
- Linksys WUSB54GP v4
- MSI MS-6861
- MSI MS-6865
- MSI MS-6869
- Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector
- Nova Tech NV-902W
- OvisLink Evo-W54USB
- SerComm UB801R
- SparkLAN WL-685R
- Sphairon UB801R
- Surecom EP-9001-g rev 3A
- Sweex LC100060
- Tonze UW-6200C
- Zaapa ZNWUSB-54
- Zinwell ZPlus-G250
- Zinwell ZWX-G261
- Zonet ZEW2500P
EXAMPLES
The following example scans for available networks:
# ifconfig ural0 scan
The following hostname.if(5) example configures ural0 to join network “mynwid”, using WPA key “mywpakey”, obtaining an IP address using DHCP:
nwid mynwid wpakey mywpakey dhcp
The following hostname.if(5) example creates a host-based access point on boot:
inet 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 mediaopt hostap nwid mynwid wpakey mywpakey
DIAGNOSTICS
- ural%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), hostapd(8), ifconfig(8)
Ralink Technology: http://www.ralinktech.com/
HISTORY
The ural
driver first appeared in
OpenBSD 3.7.
AUTHORS
The ural
driver was written by
Damien Bergamini
⟨damien@openbsd.org⟩.
CAVEATS
The ural
driver supports automatic control
of the transmit speed in BSS mode only. Therefore the use of an
ural
adapter in Host AP mode is discouraged.
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).