NAME

otus — Atheros USB IEEE 802.11a/g/n wireless network device

SYNOPSIS

otus* at uhub? port ?

DESCRIPTION

The otus driver supports USB 2.0 wireless network devices based on Atheros Communications AR9001U chipset.

The AR9001U chipset is made of an AR9170 MAC/Baseband and an AR9101 (1T2R), AR9102 (2T2R) or AR9104 (dual-band 2T2R) Radio.

These are the modes the otus driver can operate in:

BSS mode

Also known as infrastructure mode, this is used when associating with an access point, through which all traffic passes. This mode is the default.

monitor mode

In this mode the driver is able to receive packets without associating with an access point. This disables the internal receive filter and enables the card to capture packets from networks which it wouldn't normally have access to, or to scan for access points.

The otus driver can be configured to use Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK). WPA is the de facto encryption standard for wireless networks. It is strongly recommended that WEP not be used as the sole mechanism to secure wireless communication, due to serious weaknesses in it.

The otus driver can be configured at runtime with ifconfig(8) or on boot with ifconfig.if(5).

FILES

The driver needs at least version 1.0 of the following firmware files, which are loaded when an interface is attached:

/libdata/firmware/if_otus/otus-init

/libdata/firmware/if_otus/otus-main

Although these firmware files are freely redistributable, their usage is restricted.

HARDWARE

The following adapters should work:

Arcadyan WN7512

CACE AirPcap Nx

D-Link DWA-130 rev D1

D-Link DWA-160 rev A1

D-Link DWA-160 rev A2

IO-Data WN-GDN/US2

NEC Aterm WL300NU-G

Netgear WNDA3100

Netgear WN111 v2

Planex GW-US300

SMC SMCWUSB-N2

TP-Link TL-WN821N

Ubiquiti SR71 USB

Unex DNUA-81

Z-Com UB81

Z-Com UB82

ZyXEL NWD-271N

EXAMPLES

The following ifconfig.if(5) example configures otus0 to join whatever network is available on boot, using WEP key “0x1deadbeef1”, channel 11, obtaining an IP address using DHCP:

nwkey 0x1deadbeef1 chan 11 
dhcp

Join an existing BSS network, “my_net”:

# ifconfig otus0 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 nwid my_net

To use WPA, see wpa_supplicant(8) and wpa_supplicant.conf(5).

DIAGNOSTICS

otus%d: error %d, could not read firmware %s

For some reason, the driver was unable to read the microcode file from the filesystem. The file might be missing or corrupted.

otus%d: device timeout

A frame dispatched to the hardware for transmission did not complete in time. The driver will reset the hardware. This should not happen.

SEE ALSO

arp(4), ifmedia(4), netintro(4), usb(4), wpa_supplicant.conf(5), ifconfig(8), wpa_supplicant(8)

HISTORY

The otus driver first appeared in OpenBSD 4.6. It was ported to NetBSD by Anon Ymous and first appeared in NetBSD 6.0.

AUTHORS

The otus driver was written by Damien Bergamini <damien@openbsd.org> based on source code licensed under the ISC released in 2008 by Atheros Communications for Linux.

CAVEATS

The AVM FRITZ!WLAN USB Stick N adapter is currently not supported.

The otus driver does not support any of the 802.11n capabilities offered by the AR9001U chipset. Additional work is required in ieee80211(9) before those features can be supported.

The otus driver also does not currently support EDCA as this is missing in the NetBSD network stack. The hooks for it are in the driver code.