awi(4)

NAME

awi - AMD PCnetMobile IEEE 802.11 PCMCIA wireless network

driver

SYNOPSIS

To  compile this driver into the kernel, place the following
lines in your
kernel configuration file:
      device awi
      device wlan
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot  time,
place the
following line in loader.conf(5):
      if_awi_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

The awi driver supports various IEEE 802.11 wireless cards

which run AMD
PCnetMobile firmware based on AMD 79c930 controller with In

tersil (formerly Harris) PRISM radio chipset. It provides access to

32kb of memory
shared between the controller and the host. All host/device

interaction
is via this shared memory, which can be accessed either via

PCMCIA memory
space or I/O space. The awi driver encapsulates all IP and

ARP traffic
as 802.11 frames.

The driver works both in infrastructure mode and in adhoc

(independent
BSS) mode.

In infrastructure mode, it communicates with an Access Point

which serves
as a link-layer bridge between an Ethernet and the wireless

network. An
access point also provides roaming capability which allows

wireless nodes
to move between access points.

In adhoc mode, it communicates peer to peer. Though it is

more efficient
to communicate between wireless nodes, the coverage is lim

ited spatially
due to lack of roaming capability.

In addition to these two modes in the IEEE 802.11 specifica

tion, the awi
driver also supports a variant of adhoc mode out of spec for

DS radio
cards, which makes it possible to communicate with adhoc

mode of wi(4)
driver. The NWID does not affect in this mode.

For more information on configuring this device, see ifcon

fig(8).

HARDWARE

Cards supported by the awi driver include:

BayStack 650 1Mbps Frequency Hopping PCCARD adapter

BayStack 660 2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter

Icom SL-200 2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter

Melco WLI-PCM 2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter

NEL SSMagic 2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter

Netwave AirSurfer Plus

1Mbps Frequency Hopping PCCARD adapter

Netwave AirSurfer Pro

2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter

Nokia C020 WLAN

2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter

Farallon SkyLINE

2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter

The original Xircom Netwave AirSurfer is supported by the

cnw(4) driver.

MEDIA SELECTION

The DS cards support DS1 and DS2 media types, while the FH

cards support
FH1 media type. For each media type, adhoc mediaopt can be

used to indicate the driver to operate in adhoc mode. For DS radio

cards,
adhoc,flag0 mediaopt can be used for wi(4) compatible adhoc

mode. In
addition to these station modes, hostap mediaopt can be used

to create a
host-based access point.

DIAGNOSTICS

awi0: awi_pccard_probe: bad banner: The device failed to

initialize its
firmware.

awi0: failed to complete selftest (%s) The device failed to

complete its
self test. In some circumstances, resetting device after

power on fails.
Re-inserting the card or down-then-up interface may be help

ful.

awi0: transmit timeout The device failed to generate an in

terrupt to
acknowledge a transmitted packet.

awi0: failed to lock interrupt The system was unable to ob

tain the lock
to access shared memory.

awi0: command %d failed %x The device failed to complete

the request
from the system.

SEE ALSO

arp(4), card(4), cnw(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), pccard(4),

wi(4),
wlan(4), ifconfig(8)

Am79C930 PCnet Mobile Single-Chip Wireless LAN Media Access

Controller,
http://www.amd.com.

HISTORY

The awi device driver first appeared in NetBSD 1.5.

AUTHORS

The initial version of the awi driver was written by Bill

Sommerfeld
<sommerfeld@netbsd.org>. Then the awi driver module was

completely
rewritten to support cards with DS phy and to support adhoc

mode by
Atsushi Onoe <onoe@netbsd.org>.

BSD July 16, 2005

BSD