RLN(4)                    OpenBSD Programmer's Manual                   RLN(4)

NAME
     rln - device driver for RangeLAN2-based wireless network cards

SYNOPSIS
     rln0 at isa? port 0x270 irq ? flags ?
     rln* at pcmcia? function ? flags ?

DESCRIPTION
     The rln device driver supports at least the following cards:
     o   Proxim RangeLAN2 7100 ISA Card
     o   Symphony PC Cards
     o   Proxim RangeLAN2 7200 Two Piece PC Card
     o   Proxim RangeLAN2 7400 One Piece PC Card
     o   Digital RoamAbout FH 2400 PC-Card
     o   AMP Wireless PC-Card

     The Proxim RangeLAN2 air protocol is incompatible with the older Range-
     LAN(1) cards, Lucent Technologies' WaveLan cards, and with the newer
     802.11 cards in general.

     The RangeLAN2 cards communicate using an Ethernet-like protocol over the
     2.4--2.483GHz part of the spectrum.  This frequency happens to co-incide
     with that of strong harmonics emitted by common consumer microwave ovens.
     You can guess the rest.  Depending on the channel condition, the NICs op-
     erate in one of two modes: 1.6Mb/s or 0.8Mb/s signalling rate.

     In the event of errors, the card can be reset by using ifconfig(8) to
     bring the card down, then up.

MEDIA SELECTION
     Not supported.  The medium used by the device is always air.

DIAGNOSTICS
     rln0: hardware fault  The card reported a hardware fault condition. Check
     the antenna.  The interface is automatically marked down.

     rln0: synchronised to ? (?) channel ?/?  The card has successfully syn-
     chronised with a nearby unit.  Packets are only transmitted when the unit
     has synchronisation with another.

     rln0: lost sync  Synchronisation was lost. Check for microwave ovens be-
     ing used.

     rln0: nothing to sync to; now master  The card was unsuccessful in
     (re-)synchronising with any other unit, and was configured as an alter-
     nate master.

     rln0: packet too big (? > ?)  The card generate a message bigger than the
     maximum size allowable for Ethernet.

     rln0: command error 0x?? command ??  The card reported an error condition
     in the host-card protocol.

     rln0: reset timeout  An attempt to hard reset the card failed. This is
     either a serious hardware fault, or a bus conflict.

     rln0: tx_request timed out, status 0x??  The host-to-card message trans-
     fer protocol timed out. This could mean a duplex transfer is in progress
     and the interrupt service routine has not run. Check the cpu load.

     rln0: lost message ?? seq ?  An expected response to the command did not


     appear within a reasonable time.

     rln0: unknown RangeLAN2 wireless network card  The card model was not
     matched in the known-card tables.  Please send in the output of dmesg(8)
     and a description of your card (via sendbug(1)).

SEE ALSO
     intro(4), isa(4), pcmcia(4), cnw(4), ifconfig(8), http://www.proxim.com/

AUTHORS
     David Leonard, Dept Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Univer-
     sity of Queensland <david.leonard@csee.uq.edu.au>

     Information and ideas gleaned from disassembly of Dave Koberstein's
     <davek@komacke.com> Linux driver (which apparently uses Proxim code),
     from Yoichi Shinoda's <shinoda@cs.washington.edu> BSDI driver, and Geoff
     Voelker's <voelker@cs.washington.edu> Linux port of the same.

BUGS
     This driver has not been tested with lots of cards, so there are bound to
     be subtle timing problems with different hardware.  It should also work
     with the Symphony PC cards.

     I couldn't figure out how to make roaming work, nor how to interpret the
     RSSI link quality values.

     There is no way to change the channel or security ID on the card, or to
     make it a master, except through source code.  This is because it is cur-
     rently impossible under OpenBSD to trigger such changes through calls to
     ioctl(2) on the interface.

     Oh, and transmit doesn't seem to work.

OpenBSD 2.9                      2 April, 1999                               2
