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

NAME
     wi - WaveLAN/IEEE and PRISM-II 802.11DS wireless network driver

SYNOPSIS
     wi* at pci? dev ? function ?
     wi* at pcmcia? function ?
     wi* at macobio?

DESCRIPTION
     The wi driver provides support for PCMCIA adapters based on the Lucent
     Technologies WaveLAN/IEEE (aka WaveLAN II) and Intersil PRISM-II
     chipsets.  The compatible cards supported are:

           3Com AirConnect Wireless LAN
           Corega Wireless LAN PCC-11
           Corega Wireless LAN PCCA-11
           Intersil Prism II
           Samsung MagicLAN SWL-2000N
           SMC 2632 EZ Connect Wireless PC Card
           NANOSPEED ROOT-RZ2000 WLAN Card
           XI300 Wireless LAN
           Compaq Agency NC5004 Wireless Card
           Contec FLEXLAN/FX-DS110-PCC
           TDK LAK-CD011WL
           NEC Wireless Card CMZ-RT-WP
           NTT-ME 11Mbps Wireless LAN PC Card
           Addtron AWP-100
           Cabletron RoamAbout
           I-O DATA WN-B11/PCM
           Linksys WPC11

     Note that while Lucent sells PCI, ISA and PCMCIA WaveLAN/IEEE devices,
     the PCI and ISA products are actually a PCMCIA card in a PCMCIA bridge
     adapter.  Consequently, the wi driver is required for PCI, ISA and PCMCIA
     NICs.  The original WaveLAN/IEEE cards (2Mbps), the WaveLAN/IEEE Turbo
     (6Mbps), the WaveLAN/IEEE Bronze Turbo (8Mbps), and the WaveLAN/IEEE Sil-
     ver/Gold (11Mbps) adapters are supported.

     Unlike the Lucent devices, several vendors sell PCI adapters built around
     the PLX Technology 9050 or 9052 chip.  These adapters are dumb PCMCIA
     bridges that do not attach as a normal PCMCIA bus.  Instead they appear
     to the host as a normal PCI device and do not require any PCMCIA support.
     The following such bridges are supported or expected to work:

           3Com AirConnect 3CRWE777A
           Global Sun Technology GL24110P02
           LinkSys WDT11 (a rebadged GL24110P02)
           Global Sun Technology GL24110P (untested)
           Eumitcom WL11000P (untested)

     Also note that some of the PRISM-II adapters only work at 3.3V, hence
     cardbus(4) support is required for those cards to set VCC correctly, even
     though they are really 16bit cards.

     The core of the WaveLAN/IEEE is the Lucent Hermes controller.  All
     host/device interaction is via programmed I/O with the Hermes.  The Her-
     mes supports 802.11 and 802.3 frames, power management, BSS, WDS and ad-
     hoc operation modes.

     The wi driver encapsulates all IP and ARP traffic as 802.11 frames, how-
     ever it can receive either 802.11 or 802.3 frames.  Transmit speed is se-
     lectable between 1Mbps fixed, 2Mbps fixed, 2Mbps with auto fallback,
     6Mbps, 8Mbps, or 11Mbps depending on your hardware (see above).  The Lu-
     cent WaveLAN/IEEE Silver and Gold cards as well as the Intersil PRISM-II
     cards have support for WEP encryption.  The WaveLAN Gold cards support
     104bit keys, the others only accept 40bit keys.  The Lucent Bronze cards
     do not support WEP.  To enable the encryption, use the wicontrol(8) util-
     ity to set your keys.

     By default, the wi driver configures the WaveLAN card for BSS operation
     (aka infrastructure mode).  This mode requires the use of an access point
     (base station).
     The wi driver also supports an ad-hoc (point-to-point) mode where the
     nwid is ignored and stations can communicate among each other without the
     aid of an access point.  Note that this mode is not in the IEEE 802.11
     specification and the driver may not be able to interoperate with other
     vendor's cards while in ad-hoc mode.

     For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

DIAGNOSTICS
     wi%d: init failed  The WaveLAN card failed to come ready after an ini-
     tialization command was issued.

     wi%d: failed to allocate %d bytes on NIC  The driver was unable to allo-
     cate memory for transmit frames in the NIC's on-board RAM.

     wi%d: device timeout  The WaveLAN failed to generate an interrupt to ac-
     knowledge a transmit command.

SEE ALSO
     an(4), arp(4), netintro(4), ifconfig(8), wicontrol(8)

     HCF Light programming specification, http://www.wavelan.com.

HISTORY
     The wi device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0. OpenBSD support was
     added in OpenBSD 2.6.

AUTHORS
     The wi driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu> and port-
     ed to OpenBSD by Niklas Hallqvist <niklas@appli.se>.

CAVEATS
     The original Lucent WaveLAN cards usually default to channel 3; newer
     cards use channel 10 by default.  Non-Lucent cards vary, for instance the
     Addtron cards use channel 11 by default.  See wicontrol(8) for informa-
     tion on how to change the channel.

OpenBSD 3.0                      June 24, 2001                               2
