NAME
rtw
—
Realtek RTL8180L IEEE 802.11b wireless
network device
SYNOPSIS
rtw* at cardbus?
rtw* at pci?
DESCRIPTION
The rtw
driver supports PCI/CardBus
802.11b wireless adapters based on the Realtek RTL8180L.
A variety of radio transceivers can be found in these devices, including the Philips SA2400A, Maxim MAX2820, and GCT GRF5101.
These are the modes the rtw
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 rtw
driver can be configured to use
software Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). It is strongly recommended that WEP
not be used as the sole mechanism to secure wireless communication, due to
serious weaknesses in it.
The rtw
driver can be configured at
runtime with
ifconfig(8) or on boot with
hostname.if(5).
HARDWARE
The following adapters should work:
Card | Radio | Bus |
Allnet
ALL0182 |
SA2400 | CardBus |
Belkin F5D6020
V3 |
SA2400 | CardBus |
Buffalo
WLI-CB-B11 |
SA2400 | CardBus |
Corega
CG-WLCB11V3 |
SA2400 | CardBus |
D-Link
DWL-610 |
? | CardBus |
Edimax
EW-7106 |
SA2400 | CardBus |
GigaFast
WF721-AEX (R* serial) |
GRF5101 | CardBus |
Jensen AirLink
6011 |
GRF5101 | CardBus |
Level-One
WPC-0101 |
SA2400 | CardBus |
Linksys WPC11
v4 |
MAX2820 | CardBus |
Netgear
MA521 |
SA2400 | CardBus |
Ovislink AirLive
WL-1120PCM |
SA2400 | CardBus |
Planet
WL-3553 |
SA2400 | CardBus |
Q-Tec
770WC |
SA2400 | CardBus |
Q-Tec
775WC |
SA2400 | CardBus |
Roper FreeLan
802.11b |
SA2400 | CardBus |
SAFECOM
SWLCR-1100 |
SA2400 | CardBus |
TRENDnet
TEW-226PC |
? | CardBus |
VCTnet
PC-11B1 |
SA2400 | CardBus |
Winstron
CB-200B |
SA2400 | CardBus |
Zonet
ZEW1000 |
GRF5101 | CardBus |
EXAMPLES
The following example scans for available networks:
# ifconfig rtw0 scan
The following hostname.if(5) example configures rtw0 to join network “mynwid”, using WEP key “mywepkey”, obtaining an IP address using DHCP:
nwid mynwid nwkey mywepkey dhcp
The following hostname.if(5) example creates a host-based access point on boot:
mediaopt hostap nwid mynwid nwkey mywepkey inet 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0
SEE ALSO
arp(4), cardbus(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pci(4), hostname.if(5), hostapd(8), ifconfig(8)
Realtek, http://www.realtek.com.tw.
HISTORY
The rtw
device driver first appeared in
OpenBSD 3.7.
AUTHORS
The rtw
driver was written by
David Young
<dyoung@NetBSD.org>
and ported to OpenBSD by Jonathan
Gray
<jsg@openbsd.org>.
CAVEATS
GCT refuse to release any documentation on their GRF5101 RF transceiver.
While PCI devices will attach most of them are not able to transmit.
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).