known good PCI wireless NICs for FC2

[Rick Stevens]

Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 10:28:51 -0700, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> <SNIP>
> 
>>Back in 20 minutes...
>>
> 
> 
> Sorry for so many emails. This is all turning out to be a bit too much
> stream of consciousness...
> 
> OK, so it took a bit more than 20 minutes, but I've made more headway
> than in my last go-around with this stuff. I grabbed the .sys file,
> placed it (for lack of any instructions) in /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5,
> and then gave the next instruction a try:
> 
> [root at flash root]# ndiswrapper -l
> Installed ndis drivers:
> bcmwl5a driver present, hardware present
> [root at flash root]#
> 
> That all looks quite nice. The modprobe step goes fine:
> 
> [root at flash root]# modprobe ndiswrapper
> [root at flash root]#
> 
> The driver seems to be installed:
> 
> ndiswrapper version 0.11 loaded (preempt=no,smp=no)
> ndiswrapper: using irq 5
> divert: allocating divert_blk for wlan0
> wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:90:4b:4d:e3:e8 using driver bcmwl5a
> wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP
> ndiswrapper: driver bcmwl5a (Broadcom,07/17/2003, 3.30.15.0) added
> [root at flash root]#
> 
> More good results:
> 
> [root at flash root]# iwconfig
> lo        no wireless extensions.
> 
> sit0      no wireless extensions.
> 
> eth0      no wireless extensions.
> 
> wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:off/any
>           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462GHz  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
>           Bit Rate:54Mb/s   Tx-Power:25 dBm
>           RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B
>           Encryption key:off
>           Power Management:off
>           Link Quality:100/100  Signal level:-10 dBm  Noise level:-256 dBm
>           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
>           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:779   Missed beacon:0
> 
> [root at flash root]#
> 
> [root at flash root]# iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
> [root at flash root]#
> 
> At this point I don't think I can go further as I'm in the office and
> my access point is at home, so this will have to wait, but I do have
> some questions in getting ready for the weekend:
> 
> 1) Do I need to do anything more than add ndiswrapper to
> /etc/modprobe.conf to get this far the next time I boot? (I can try
> this out in a minute but figured I'd ask.)

No, all you need is "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" in modprobe.conf and away
you go.  You will need to set up the appropriate stuff in
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0, but that's no biggie.

> 2) Can I do WEP 128-bit encryption with this? It appears supported in
> the info above, but does it work? It is the Windows driver
> (presumably) so I assume all of that is supported?

Yup.  Remember that if you specify your key in ASCII, the key must
be prefixed with "s:", e.g. in your ifcfg-wlan0:

	KEY=s:whateveryourkeyis

> 3) Anything else I should be aware of?

Nope.  Remember to set up the ESSID=, CHANNEL= and KEY= stuff and
you should be good to go.

Sorry I didn't respond sooner, but I've been busy.  Yes, I neglected
to tell you that you needed the .inf and .sys files.  DOH!
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-       "Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context."       -
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