NAME
an —
Aironet 4500/4800 and Cisco
340/350 series wireless network driver
SYNOPSIS
an* at pcmcia? function ?
an* at pci? dev ? function ?
an* at isapnp?
DESCRIPTION
The
an driver provides support for Aironet Communications
4500/4800 and Cisco Aironet 340/350 series wireless network adapters. This
includes the ISA, PCI and PCMCIA varieties. The 4500 series adapters operate
at 1 and 2Mbps while the 4800 series and 340/350 series can operate at 1, 2,
5.5 and 11Mbps. The ISA, PCI and PCMCIA devices are all based on the same core
PCMCIA modules and all have the same programming interface, however unlike the
Lucent WaveLAN/IEEE cards, the ISA and PCI cards appear to the host as normal
ISA and PCI devices and do not require any PCMCIA support.
The PCMCIA Aironet cards require PCMCIA support. ISA cards can either be
configured to use ISA Plug and Play or to use a particular I/O address and IRQ
by properly setting the DIP switches on the board. (The default switch setting
is for plug and play.) The
an driver has Plug and Play
support and will work in either configuration, however when using a hard-wired
I/O address and IRQ, the driver configuration and the NIC's switch settings
must agree. PCI cards require no switch settings of any kind and will be
automatically probed and attached.
All host/device interaction with the Aironet cards is via programmed I/O. The
Aironet devices support 802.11 and 802.3 frames, power management, BSS
(infrastructure) and IBSS (ad-hoc) operation modes. The
an
driver encapsulates all IP and ARP traffic as 802.11 frames, however it can
receive either 802.11 or 802.3 frames. Transmit speed is selectable between
1Mbps, 2Mbps, 5.5Mbps, 11Mbps, or “auto” (the NIC automatically
chooses the best speed).
By default, the
an driver configures the Aironet card to join
an access point with an SSID of null string. For ad-hoc mode, in which
stations can communicate among each other without the aid of an access point,
the driver must be set using
ifconfig(8).
For more information on configuring this device, see
ifconfig(8) and
ifmedia(4).
HARDWARE
Cards supported by the
an driver include:
- Aironet 4500 Series
- Aironet 4800 Series
- Cisco Aironet 340 Series
- Cisco Aironet 350 Series
DIAGNOSTICS
- an%d: init failed
- The Aironet card failed to come ready after an
initialization command was issued.
- an%d: failed to allocate %d bytes on
NIC
- The driver was unable to allocate memory for transmit
frames in the NIC's on-board RAM.
- an%d: device timeout
- The Aironet card failed to generate an interrupt to
acknowledge a transmit command.
SEE ALSO
arp(4),
ifmedia(4),
netintro(4),
ifconfig(8)
HISTORY
The
an device driver first appeared in
FreeBSD 4.0, and then in
NetBSD
1.6.
AUTHORS
The
an driver was written by
Bill Paul
<
wpaul@ee.columbia.edu>.