WirelessChipsets

On this page, we want to collect information about the status of specific WLAN chipsets, NOT the devices. Linux drivers are nearly always generic drivers, so different devices with the same hardware are driven by the same driver; normally the system doesn't even know about the vendor of the device. In addition WLAN devices tend to change the real hardware in them very often and without any information to the users.

PCI, PC-Card/32 Bit PCMCIA

Chipset Vendor

Chipset name (as from lspci, maybe shortened)

Status on Ubuntu 5.10 "breezy badger"

Status on Ubuntu 6.06 "dapper drake"

date

problems on basic WLAN functionality (1)

interface name

problems on basic WLAN functionality (1)

WPA (2)

ways to get network-manager to fail (3)

interface name

Atheros

AR5212

none

ath*

none

ath*

Atheros

Super-G

none

ath*

none

ath*

Broadcom

BCM4306

ndiswrapper; no monitoring, no link quality information

wlan*

2006-03-29

Broadcom

BCM4318

ndiswrapper & bcmwl5.sys & bcmwl5.inf

wlan*

bcm43xx driver

eth0

2006-04-26

intel

ipw2100

none

eth*

none

Ad-Hoc + WEP

eth*

2006-03-29

intel

ipw2200

none

eth*

none

eth*

2006-03-29

Intersil

Prism

Intersil

Prism 54

Intersil

Prism GT

none

wlan*

Intersil

Prism 2

Intersil

Prism 2.5

Intersil

Prism 3

Marvell

(Libertas 802.11b/g Wireless SoftAP)

ndiswrapper >= 1.13 (???); ndiswrapper in breezy too old1

wlan*

2006-04-22

RaLink

RT2400

ra*

n

ra*

RaLink

RT2500

very unstable, no mode=Master

ra*

no mode=Master

ra*

2006-03-29

RaLink

RT2570

ra*

ra*

TI

ACX 100

none

wlan*

none

wlan*

2006-03-29

TI

ACX 111

USB

Chipset Vendor

Chipset name (as from lsusb (4))

Status on Ubuntu 5.10 "breezy badger"

Status on Ubuntu 6.06 "dapper drake"

date

problems on basic WLAN functionality(1)

interface name

problems on basic WLAN functionality (1)

WPA (2)

ways to get network-manager to fail (3)

interface name

Atheros

ID 1385:4251 (AR5005UG)

ndiswrapper >= 1.7 2

wlan*

2006-04-22

1) just write "none", if you do not need to install any driver or change configuration files (maybe except /etc/network/interfaces manually.

2) needs wpasupplicant. This is NOT supported on breezy (but might work, as an unconfigured version of wpasupplicant exists in universe).

3) just write "none", as long, as you can't get network-manager to fail on it.

4) it is VERY important to add the IDs here. So a valid entry looks like "ID 046d:c308 Logitech, Inc. Internet Navigator Keyboard" (that example is not a WLAN device Wink ;) or only "ID 058f:6362" if lsusb doesn't have strings.


CategoryLookMergeDelete

  1. Luc Saillard is working on a [http://www.saillard.org/linux/mrv8k/ native Linux driver] for the Marvell Libertas chipset. He made some [http://www.saillard.org/news/2005-10-04_libertas.php progress] some time ago. (1)

  2. Atheros' USB-chipsets are [http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.drivers.madwifi.user/5372 quite different] from the PCI ones: Support [http://www.madwifi.org/ticket/33 planned for MadWifi 2.0], which is far away. (2)

WirelessChipsets (last edited 2008-08-06 16:34:56 by localhost)