Explaining WLAN Chips' Poor Linux Support

morcheeba writes "Kernel Traffic is reporting (mirror mirror list) that 'Some WLAN Chip Specs Secret To Protect Military Communications.' While this is stretching it a bit -- these radios are generally limited to a narrow frequency range and few modulation types -- software can cause illegal radio operation, especially when the laws vary by country. Is Linux support for 802.11g and Centrino chipsets going to be delayed by manufacturers afraid of FCC harassment? An interesting discussion on the future of Openness in radio chipsets." Interesting comments from Alan Cox in here about just how flexible some of these chips are.

Comments

I thought it was just about money

[Anonymous Coward]

If 95%+ of your market will be Windows users, it might make financial sense to just worry about that 95% and develop support for them.

Re:I thought it was just about money

[ivan256]

If that 95% wants 100% interoperability, failure to support the other 5% can be costly.

Re:I thought it was just about money

[afidel]

It's really not that expensive, if you capture one large customer it's probably worth it. Cisco/Aironet has one coder who does the driver and support software for Linux and one primary tester who spends a lot of his time on testing the Linux stuff. These two together probably make somewhere in the $200K range when benifits are added in, not a whole lot when yearly sales are around $100 million. In addition there is a community developed driver made from resources that Cisco/Aironet made available to an outside developer.

Re:I thought it was just about money

[Etyenne]

I know you are just trolling, but this is over-generalization.. It really depend on how big the remaining 5% is vs how much it would cost to support them. It may be profitable.

Re:I thought it was just about money

[g4dget]

If you make it only possible to use your products on Windows, it isn't surprising that 95% of your market is on Windows.

If your "95%" figure is supposed to refer to the fraction of desktop users using Windows within the population, your number unsubstantiated and probably erroneous. Microsoft's market share is usually overestimated because many desktop uses of other operating systems aren't counted towards those other operating systems, many non-desktop uses of Windows are counted as Windows users, and many non-Windows users are counted as Windows users because they have a Windows license that they don't, or don't want to, use.

Re:I thought it was just about money

[Sherloqq]

If you make it only possible to use your products on Windows, it isn't surprising that 95% of your market is on Windows.

But if 95% of your market is Windows, it doesn't make sense to make it possible to use your products with other operating systems.

It becomes a vicios circle, a chicken-and-egg problem if you will. Someone, some day, has to break it, but it's not easy to convince people to do so. I can almost guarantee that the first people to do that (someone pointed out Aironet?) will see a significant uptake of their products by the linux crowd -- mostly because they will be the only ones with a linux product, but also because the linux crowd will stand behind the company. One hand washes the other. One day, someone will see that.

6 months

[nevermodded5]

And this won't be an issue

FP!

[Anonymous Coward]

FP!

AC

eh

[revmoo]

What people need to realize is that nothing in software can be secure. It is far to easy to crack. You may have 100 developers working on a secure WiFi driver, but there are thousands of bored hackers out there waiting to tear it apart. If something needs to be secure, do it in hardware.

On a side note, I've not had any trouble getting my WiFi hardware to work on my slackware laptop, but I understand that some chipsets can be more difficult to setup than others.

Re:eh

[sid crimson]

Could you explain this to us clueless types?...

Why would hardware be more secure than software, when (if my facts are straight) some hardware solutions are merely software hard-coded on the chip? By your rationale, an OpenBSD firewall is (by default) less secure than a Linksys firewall.

This is a serious question from someone who wants to learn. :-)

-sid

Re:eh

[nenolod]

Well... they can't do that... because that would require actual work... and... that isn't plausible for major conglomerates. Since a majority of the users of these cards run windows, which is insecure anyway, they figure their cards dont really need to be secure as well.

Plus... if they do it with hardware... then people will be suspicious about privacy...

Re:eh

[nenolod]

...Actually... Linksys doesnt make firewalls. They make shitty NAT appliances. If you want firewalling, then openbsd is an option. If you want it done right, then using ACL on a Cisco 2610 is a better option. And if you're using Cable or DSL and calling that box with linksys or netgear or whatever on it a "router", then you need to have the crap knocked out of you with a cluebat.

Another issue about these NAT appliances made by linksys is... how secure is NAT when dumbasses enable port forwarding? Port forwarding defeats the entire purpose of NAT, IP Masquerade, IP Gatewaying, Transparent Proxying, whatever you wish to call it. NAT gives people an entirely FALSE sense of security, unless properly implemented by the person who configures the NAT appliance.

IF your NAT appliance was set up with your modem, then it was installed by a goon. Cable or DSL goons do not know how to properly config NAT appliances. Almost every cable or DSL installation that I have seen done in this manner has had all ports forwarded to a box, via placing the box in what is known as a "DMZ". Now, given this information, HOW SECURE IS A FIREWALL WHEN IT'S FORWARDING PORTS TO YOUR BOX WITHOUT ASKING QUESTIONS?!

Firewalling is a crummy method of securing internet connections that is usable for home usage, but not normally acceptable for doing anything REAL. If you care about security, then you had better make sure your crappy NAT appliance is configured properly.

Now... on to OpenBSD.

OpenBSD allows ACL, therefore is much nicer for firewalling than a NAT appliance. The problem is that it is dependant on a primarily software solution. Due to the software dependance, it can be exploited. Oops, there goes *BSD, Linux, AIX and anything else you would DARE throw at the problem on the hardware front.

Re:eh

[Anonymous Coward]

It has nothing to do with the cards/computers being "secure" and everything to do with the pubilc airwaves being "secure" (as in regulated).

Of course the airwaves can not really be secure, but laws keep things working reasonably well by prohibiting Joe Blow from going to Radio Shack and buying a consumer device that could fuck everything up. Strictly a barrier to entry.

Now the cats out of the bag, and someone will hack the Windows driver to get these these cards to run their secret network on 3133Hz or fuck with police radio for the hell of it.

Re:eh

[Anonymous Coward]

Yours is not a 802.11g, is it?

Re:eh

[drunk_as_in_beer]

Why would hardware be more secure than software, when (if my facts are straight) some hardware solutions are merely software hard-coded on the chip?

The "hard-coded" part, the fact that the code cannot be modified. Of course, anything that can be easilly modified can be hacked. For example, firmware written on an EEPROM can be rewritten. However, the consequences of a failed hardware hack can be much worse than a failed software hack. A modification to hardware, even a nonworking firmware, could leave the hardware useless; not to mention the difficulty in reverse-engineering it. So costs of hacking hardware can make it less likely to be done than software.

I think what the guy meant when he said "security" is that its easier for the end-user to hack the product. He wasn't talking about network security (firewalls, etc). So basically, if a WLAN card allows for the possibility of operating on frequencies that it should not operate on, restrict this at the hardware level, not the software level (drivers). And doing it in firmware would be a poor choice as well (if it can be rewritten).

Re:eh

[revmoo]

Well, even software coded on a chip is at least a little more of a barrier from people tampering with your software, then distributing it as a driver that people can easily inspect.

And anyone that thinks linksys NAT appliances are secure is nuts. Just from looking at my own network, I've been able to discover multiple vulnerabilities in my linksys router, such as it automatically forwarding SMB ports without asking and without an option to disable(yes I've informed linksys of such, no they aren't doing anything about it).

Re:eh

[Eneff]

Oh wait, I have an idea!

Let's require everyone to spend a week learning fundamentals of Unix and 500 bucks and another week putting together OpenBSD-compliant parts (not to mention the day or two researching what exactly will and will not work on BSD) just to give up because they can't figure out why the fuck EverQuest won't work! (Adknowledged, the real problem is that most consumer programs were developed with a direct connection and a modem in mind. Guess what? That's irrelevant.)

Yeah, sounds REAL swell.

Yes, Those Netgear and LinkSys boxes are really routers. They really work. Until you can tell me how to get a wireless solution up and running with BSD for an hour's work and under 150 dollars, your argument is irrelevant.

Re:eh

[drunk_as_in_beer]

And anyone that thinks linksys NAT appliances are secure is nuts.

My Linksys NAT is totally secure. In fact I dare you to try and crack it. To help you out, I've got portforwarded ports 22 and 21 to OpenSSH and pureftpd running on a Linux box. The IP address for it is 192.168.1.1. Good luck, I look forward to seeing your pathetic failed attempts in my SNMP logs.

Re:eh

[revmoo]

Ha! I'm more than up to the challenge! I am the master hacker.

revmoo@davinci:~$ssh -l hax0r 192.168.1.1
hax0r@endor's password:
hax0r@endor $ ./apt
Linux kmod + ptrace local root exploit by


=> Simple mode, executing /usr/bin/id >
/dev/tty
sizeof(shellcode)=95
=> Child process started..........
=> Child process started..........
=> Child process started..........
=> Child process started.+ 19606
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=102(ssh),10(wheel)
- 19606 ok!
root@endor root #

Re:eh

[Fulcrum of Evil]

AAH! You cracked Endor! Now where will the poor Ewoks live?

Re:eh

[Jason R]

Easy, if you want to make a chip totally secure you do it through bonding options.

For the custom stuff that needs full programmability that you want to provide to 'secure' customers (i.e., milatary etc) you have a bonding option which enables all features.

For limited stuff for public consumption you have a bonding option that restricts setting certain internal registers or limiting the valid values.

Bonding options work by tying signals within the package to adjacent power pins, forcing the certain logic values into the internals of the chip which can logically disable/enable features.

By using bonding options you only have to produce one layout/chip, and you get the different products just through different packaging. The main NRE costs of ASICs are the layout/masks, while the packaging is very cheap.

Look at how CPU manufacturers can bond the dies to limit the availabe clock speeds... Common practice.

With the hardware internally restricted, there's nothing the programmers can do (as long as the internal restrictions are properly implemented). Of course you can chemically decap the chip and rebond the part, but this would be incredibly difficult/time consuming. No way you could do it in production quantities.

Re:eh

[Descartes]

Hey, that's the address of my router!

(and yes I know what 192.168.*.* means)

Re:eh

[ncc74656]

Could you explain this to us clueless types?...

Why would hardware be more secure than software, when (if my facts are straight) some hardware solutions are merely software hard-coded on the chip?

Consider the difference between a "winmodem" (some of which are little more than a codec on a card) and a modem that has its own DSP and microcontroller. You could write a driver for a winmodem that would do whatever you want (including getting a true 56 kbps out of it, which the FCC wouldn't like), but you're not going to do that with the controller-based modem unless you manage to rewrite its firmware (not impossible, but nowhere near as likely as rolling your own winmodem driver).

Re:eh

[nolife]

Not that the cheaper home routers are flawless but they are indeed routers and many are indeed firewalls. Not as configurable as an extra machine but they are not just blind NAT forwarders opened up to the world. You may want to go out and actually look at some of the models.

how secure is NAT when dumbasses enable port forwarding?

You can do the same thing with your BSD firewall. This is a function of how the USER wants it setup, not a deficiency of the firewall.

Cable or DSL goons do not know how to properly config NAT appliances.

Again, you are talking about the USERS configuration, not the equipment. How many of those same users can properly configure the 2610 you suggest they use? I would probably not many more then ZERO!!

Based on reading your entire post, I have deduced a few things about your thinking.

You think everyone with an internet connection should:

Have a BSD or Cisco firewall.

Have extensive networking background in firewall construction and network monitoring

Gain right of passage by bowing to the packet gods through some kind of ritual. Or not use any firewall/NAT appliance at all because they are not "in the know" like yourself.

Re:eh

[Anonymous Coward]

buy OpenBSD CD = U$S 40 + Shipping.
Follow fold out instructions on old pentium 120 ~ 1h.
Edit /etc/sysctl.conf
net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
net.inet6.ip6.forwarding=1

Edit /etc/rc.conf
change "PF=NO" to "PF=YES"

Edit /etc/pf.conf

$ext_if="rl0"
$int_if="rl1"

nat on $ext_if from $int_if to all -> ($ext_if)

block in on $ext_if all
pass out quick on $ext_if proto {tcp,udp,icmp} all keep state

#reboot

Listo!
Under U$S 50.
Under 1h 30m.
Only required knowledge: vi

Re:eh

[Saint Stephen]

If you believe all systems are crackable, how about this theory:

The problem of breeding humans who do not wish to commit havoc is of equal difficulty to the problem of creating uncrackable systems. (I.E., both are nearly impossible.)

Therefore, it is equally useful to spend one's time trying to convince people to "just not be an asshole" as it is securing systems. This cuts both ways -- privacy and security. I once made this statement in defense of things like Hailstorm -- the fact that the government/organizations have all my personal data does not in and of itself harm me, only the intentions of those that hold that data.

For example, your employer typically knows your Checking account routing #s, SS#s, heath data, but doesn't abuse the knowledge, because they have a self-serving interest not to. Why not imagine that situation everywhere -- everybody knows everything, nobody abuses knowledge. This position is no more bullshit than trying to secure everything, both are nearly impossible!!!

[grin]

Re:eh

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source people are evil. The make the world unsafe by using hardware to do what it is able to do.

Of course, making hardware that can screw up all sorts of radio signals if it isnt used as intended is perfectly ok. The hardware manufacturers shouldnt bear any responsibility for what they made. You know, kind of like a nuclear bomb, but less serious.

Re:eh

[cHiphead]

i think the point is more along the lines of freebsd/etc is free if you have some old junker box lying around (like most of us seem to do), you just have to spend a little time LEARNING something... god forbid.

disclaimer: i use a linksys pos router at home and yes, its gets the job done, but make no mistake, i only use it cuz im fucking lazy. :)

Re:eh

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I just did that. $50. Redhat. I little more that 1 hour, but the setup is ways richer.

Re:eh

[Michael Hunt]

You're a moron.

You speak of 'ACL' as if it was some kind of 'thing' which mysteriously makes 'other things' better. You also seem to have absolutely no idea how any of the products you're recommending over the generic crappy 200 buck NAT devices (which, by the way, actually do suck. but not for the reasons you're suggesting.)

A Cisco 2610 is not only on the virge of planned obsolecence (at the very least, Cisco is advising that you buy the 2620 instead, as it has a 100 megabit ethernet port, as opposed to the 10 megabit port on the 2610), but will not do stateful filtering. ACLs on Cisco (or most other) pure l3 routers will not keep state in the same way that OpenBSD's PF, IPF from FreeBSD, etc will. They're simply designed to drop certain traffic based on policy. If you want things to work properly under TCP, you have to allow EVERY packet that has ACK & !SYN set back in the other direction.

I suggest next time, before you go off your banana at someone for not having as much of a 'clue' as you do about 'ACL', or anything else for that matter, that you attempt to thoroughly familiarize yourself with the subject matter at hand first, otherwise you look like a half-cocked moron.

Mike.

Re:eh

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a TERRIBLE analogy. If writing your own winmodem driver actually was that easy, there would actually be winmodem support for linux.

Re:eh

[Eneff]

Ummm...

How much does an old pentium 120 cost?

What if you don't have 2000 dollars of old computer parts lying around?

Re:eh

[Just Some Guy]

How much does an old pentium 120 cost?

I just bought one from my local newspaper's classified ads for $35.

Re:eh

[xcham]

I run a Linux-based firewall that I threw together a few years back for about $90 CAD - a Compaq Prolinea of some sort, Pentium-90. Nowadays a comparable machine would be around $35 CAD I'm guessing, so like $23 for all you american folk. Recently I threw together "electricjesus", my OpenBSD box, for a lot less than $90 CAD - and to be honest the only thing that DID work from my scrap parts box was the ethernet card and the hard drive. My total list of expenditures:

- $7.50 for an ISA vga card (only necessary to actually make the thing boot, never gets any use)
- somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 for a p166mmx + board combo.
- $10 CAD for two sticks of 16meg 72-pin ram to throw in the bloody thing.
- $7.50 CAD for a floppy drive.

All in all, I spent $50, plus 15% tax, CAD. (plus whatever the parts I already had cost, negligible I'd imagine). Don't even need a floppy drive or CD-ROM permanently in there - I just downloaded OpenBSD from their FTP site. Using the above script, or a slightly more complicated one, one saves a good amount of money and in the process LEARNS something about networking, so that when "EverQuest doesn't fucking work", I know how to get around it via port-forwarding or whatever. Best part is, I know enough to figure out how to fix it on my friends' hardware-based routers (they honestly shouldn't sell those things without a mandatory training course or something... some wouldn't believe the amount of times someone has complained to me that "my ICQ file sends don't work!"... when I tell them to go check their router settings they ask me "what's a router?")

The only annoyances are things like MSN file transfers and non-PASV ftp, where the protocol actually has IP addresses embedded into them. There are some reliable and not-so-reliable ip_masq_* Linux kernel modules for that, I know, and OpenBSD probably has great ways of handling things comme ca. And hell, you can configure iptables (under Linux) to lock your network down like the Virgin Mary's underpants... running nmap on my Internet IP will more often than not tell yo u that my host isn't even up. That's more than enough security for the home user.

Re:eh

[nenolod]

WRONG. NEITHER AN OpenBSD router or a linksys box are routers. They are both NAT (Network Address Translation). You want a ROUTER. Go buy a CISCO 2605.

prism2 only!

[drwho]

I am not the only one unhappy with the very poor support of linux by many wifi chip vendors. Intersil seems to be the only one even close to being open, and you have to sign all sorts of agreements to get the specs (legally). My understanding of this is that a lot of the functions are being moved from the chip hardware to system software, so it's not just a device driver required to use these newer cards. Vendors don't want everyone to see their programming.

The prism2 were the first really popular wireless cards, partly because of low cost but also because of the ability to write drivers for them. I wish other manufacturers wouldn't be so reticent about their support. I actually prefer it if they keep the cards smart and the systems dumb, because it increases portability and compatibility. It probably adds to the cost though.

Re:prism2 only!

[shane_rimmer]

Atmel released an open source driver that can be found here.

Re:prism2 only!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not the only one unhappy with the very poor support of linux by many wifi chip vendors.

Actually there's an article about this on Slashdot today. Post a message there and you can probably get some discussion going.

Re:prism2 only!

[IcePop456]

Good thing I work for Intersil! Buy our stock! haha

Time

[insecuritiez]

When I went wireless on my Linux laptop about a year ago the only card I could get supported was the Lucen Orinoco. It's a great card. But now, many months later there is the WLAN project and many many cards are supported. The future will be the same. More support is coming. The major problem I see though is the manufaturers. They write drivers for windows. Most of them arn't about to write them for linux. Meaning that every piece of hardware will be a few months behind while a group of dedicated programers do the dirty work for the company.

Re:Time

[L7_]

why *should* card companies spend money to write drivers for linux when there are going to be enthusiasts that do it for them?

It makes no sense from a company viewpoint, other than to get the support from the 5% of people that are using thier cards with linux. But even so, if an independent driver is written, those people using linux are still going to be buying the company's cards with no out of pocket expense to the company.

It's kinda messed up.

Re:Time

[garcia]

remember that these cards are only supported in the 2mbs and 11mbs group. The 22mbs and 54mbs are not supported yet.

I have been happily using DLINK 650Ws for a few years now (w/the RICOH PCIPCMCIA bridge on my desktop).

I would love to upgrade but I prefer a Linux-based setup for the WLAN for added control.

Re:Time

[insecuritiez]

Because the company gets respect and it's name out there amonge a group of power users and frequent buyers. Look at NVidia. They sure get a lot of coverage on Slashdot. Much of this is due to their great Linux drivers. If they made great cards that wern't supported or had poor/shotty support many fewer Slashdot readers would care one witt about what NVidia does. When Apple embraced open source all of a sudden they got a whole second army of geeks following. Why does it make sense to write drivers in support of linux? Because the 5% of the people that will use those products have a lot of influence in a much larger comunity. (IT, business settings)

Re:Time

[garcia]

The problem is that the vendors won't release enough information about the chipset for the volunteers to write the drivers and now w/the DMCA I am sure many fear legal action for reverse engineering the card.

Re:Time

[insecuritiez]

It is funny you mention the Dlink 650+. This is the exact card I had when I decided to go wireless. I couldn't get it to work so I sold it and bought a Lucent Orinoco. But, a few months later I see people using the DLink line (650+ and others) on Linux without a problem. Of course not with the X2 support or the X4 (44mbs) with an upgraded firmware. But then DLink claimed double speed and I did a few experiments when I was using the 650+ in windows and I could not find a speed difference running between 11 and 22. The card and the router were only about 6 feet away when I did the testing. So so much "twice as fast" like they claim. So the 650(+) is supported, just not it's "faster" 2x setting.

Re:Time

[epsworth]

I think you may be confused between the 650 and 650+. Despite the similar names, they use entirely different chipsets. I think the 650 has very good Linux support, but I know for sure that the 650+ has major problems under Linux, since I bought two of them only to find they don't work!

The 650+ uses the Texas Instruments ACX100 chipset, and they are not willing to release the necessary specs to write drivers for it. Check the ACX100 project on sourceforge to get the details. The only known driver is a binary-only module that will only work for an obscure Mandrake kernel version (PCI version only), and I have only heard of one person who got it to do anything at all.

You might be right about the (lack of) speed difference between the 11Mbps and 22Mbps products, but I haven't tested them. As always, take marketing-speak with a pinch of salt... It can't be entirely bullshit though, or I would have expected to hear a lot more complaints. Does anyone know more about the difference between the two standards that could explain?

Re:Time

[Y2K is bogus]

I believe the 22Mbps cards are merely full duplex. You won't see any speed difference in normal downloads because you aren't needing full duplex. Get in an environment where you have multiple cards on the same channel and you'll see a difference. This is because the WIFI network is like an ethernet hub, everyone sees everyone else's traffic, so they contribute to the entire usage of the network.

Re:Time

[Slouchy-a-go-go]

I concur. I'm a Sr, SysAdmin and I've been in the Director's Chair on a couple occasions. I've made purchasing decsions and/or reccomendations for both smaller (say 60 people) and larger (3000 people) shops, and based those decision on broad OS support for devices. Why pigenhole my clients to one (or even two) OSes and prevent them from having the most flexibility in terms of what OS that can choose to use? Also, in my experience, those devices which offer broad OS support are generally better supported overall (less bugs, quirks, etc.). It's all about standards!

Re:Time

[insecuritiez]

This may be so but it still doesn't explain their 44mbps "4x" mode that you can upgrade to with a firmware upgrade. If 2x is only full duplex then my testing would not have seen an increas since I was testing maximum one-way bandwidth.

Re:Time

[LarsG]

I believe the 22Mbps cards are merely full duplex.

802.11/b/g/h is half duplex. Transmit and receive is on the same channel.

What they did with the 22Mbps part, was adding an additional modulation to the 802.11b spec. Works OK, but it's not a standard - and Linux support is abysmal. :-/

Re:Time

[natmsincome.com]

That's like saying why post in a Blog (Ie Slashdot) as only 1% of the Internet reads them.

The really reason why you'd want to is that it's often that minority that make the choices.

Of the 95% that use windows I'd say atleast 60% would have never made that choice but been told it by someone else. Same as I'd expect that the 1% of the internet that reads Blogs write and control more than 50% of the web indirrectly.

The reason for this is that the majority often just go with the flow and do what they are told. It's the minority that often tells the majority what to buy.

Most people ask me to recommend computer "stuff" because I'm a computer person. I'd be very hesitant to recommend anything that didn't have good support for linux even if they were using windows.

Also good support for a minority often shows that the company has *GASP* "good support" if they can't be bother writing then chances are they won't support their own products latter on as they don't value to product or their customers.

It's like a school you have the leaders/popular people that say what almost everyone else does. If you can make them do something you can get most of the shcool to do the same thing

Thoes are my thoughts anyway.

Re:Time

[cjsnell]

IMHO, there's a reason for the good NVidia Linux drivers and that is the demand for 3-D capabale graphics workstations running Linux--the kind that movie studios and engineering firms use. I think the geek/Slashdot community's adoration of NVidia is a side effect of their market-driven choice, not the reason for their choice.

The only way that tech specs for wlan cards will be released is if there the financial benefits of their release justify the release.

Chris

Re:Time

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have to - but the enthusiasts drivers don't get writen if they don't release the specs.

Re:Time

[amorsen]

It is worse than you think. Some 650's use one chipset, some use another. One chipset works in Linux, one does not. If you buy one for Linux, you are effectively buying a lottery ticket.

drivers take a little while

[g4dget]

Linux drivers don't come from the Driver Fairy, they usually get written by volunteers. That takes a while: getting the specs, implementing the drivers, testing them, etc. And it usually only happens after the hardware is starting to sell. So, it may well take a year or two for Linux drivers to appear for a piece of hardware. If you want it to happen faster, volunteer yourself.

Of course, a few manufacturers do ship their own Linux drivers. That's nice, but it isn't all that common yet. And many of the drivers that do ship from manufacturers are based on proprietary, commercial driver toolkits and have to be closed source.

Centrino is a special case. Centrino is largely a marketing construct, not a technology, and the marketing group that pushed Centrino inside Intel apparently wants to make Microsoft happy and doesn't like Linux. I doubt this is going to last: Linux is too important for Intel to maintain this position.

Re:drivers take a little while

[PurpleFloyd]

That takes a while: getting the specs, implementing the drivers, testing them, etc. And it usually only happens after the hardware is starting to sell. So, it may well take a year or two for Linux drivers to appear for a piece of hardware. If you want it to happen faster, volunteer yourself.

The problem with 802.11x support under Linux is that the specs are being kept under wraps. The card manufacturers say the reason is that their cards could be reprogrammed to transmit on reserved frequencies (military, air traffic control, etc.). Apparently, many of these manufacturers would like to make Linux drivers available, but they can't be free-as-in-speech without allowing any decent hacker to change the operating frequency and spy on or disrupt sensitive transmissions.

As for Linux Centrino support, Linux is not particularly important in the mobile market (excepting Linux-based embedded systems). Servers remain the primary Linux market; Linux laptops are more the domain of hobbyists. While I have no doubt that Centrino drivers will be available for Linux, if what you said about the marketing team in charge of Centrino is true, they will probably come from the hacker community rather than from Intel.

Re:drivers take a little while

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. They can't get the specs. If I wanted to write a driver, I couldn't get the spces. They provide no binaries. Centrino has it's own undocumented chip. All these points are covered in the article.

Re:drivers take a little while

[g4dget]

The problem with 802.11x support under Linux is that the specs are being kept under wraps.

That's true for a lot of hardware. Reverse engineering is part of writing a Linux driver. That's why it takes a while.

The card manufacturers say the reason is that their cards could be reprogrammed to transmit on reserved frequencies (military, air traffic control, etc.).

Yeah, that's just one of the many excuses and reasons.

As for Linux Centrino support, Linux is not particularly important in the mobile market

Linux is a lot more important than people think. I'd say between a third and half of the presentations I see (in a CS research unrelated to open source software or Linux) are given from Linux machines, with Macintosh being a very, very distant third. Granted, this is not your PowerPoint-toting business users, but it strongly suggests that Linux is widely used in some significant populations.

And, frankly, many of the people who are running Windows are only doing so because Linux support for power management, wireless cards, and graphics cards ("how do I enable the external monitor?") is still too cumbersome. With better drivers, Linux might easily become the predominant mobile platform for CS researchers, instead of being "just" very big.

Re:drivers take a little while

[Anonymous Coward]

Things that have never been said: "Oh shit! My business plan forgot the significant group of broke-assed CS grad students."

Re:drivers take a little while

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we all know that engineers have such shitty salaries that they can't own their own computer and they will never be involved in purchasing decisions for their company.

will be hacked

[Anonymous Coward]

If the vendor don't release the spec. It'll be hacked and the hacker can do anything he whishes.

FYI incaseof /. fx

[Anonymous Coward]

2. Some WLAN Chip Specs Secret To Protect Military Communications
28 Apr - 1 May (21 posts) Archive Link: "Broadcom BCM4306/BCM2050 support"
Topics: Networking
People: Martin List-Petersen, David S. Miller, Alan Cox, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger, Richard B. Johnson

Bas Mevissen asked if Linux had any support for Broadcom's BCM4306 or BCM2050 WLAN chips. He saw that the BCM4401 ethernet chip had a Linux driver, and was hopeful that maybe the WLAN chips did as well. Martin List-Petersen replied, "It seems, that the specs haven't been released yet. There are quite a few Wlan cards out there based on the Broadcom chips (nearly all cards, that support 802.11g), so it's quite a shame. (Actually this fits the the TrueMobile 1180, 1300 and 1400, speaking of Dell wireless lan cards)." He added, "The same problem is with the Intel Prowireless 2100 (Centrino) WLan card. No Linux support available yet, which is another choice for the Dell notebooks at the moment." But he also said there was a Petition folks could sign, regarding this very issue. Martin concluded, "I've tried to contact Broadcom directly, but they are just ignoring mails containing the word "Linux", so it seems." David S. Miller also said:

Don't expect specs or opensource drivers for any of these pieces of hardware until these vendors figure out a way to hide the frequency programming interface.

Ie. these cards can be programmed to transmit at any frequency, and various government agencies don't like it when f.e. users can transmit on military frequencies and stuff like that.

The only halfway plausible idea I've seen is to not document the frequency programming registers, and users get a "region" key file that has opaque register values to program into the appropriate registers. The file is per-region (one for US, Germany, etc.)and the wireless kernel driver reads in this file to do the frequency programming.

So don't blame the vendors on this one, several of them would love to publish drivers public for their cards, but simply cannot with upsetting federal regulators.

Alan Cox remarked that folks were already cracking the Windows interface on those cards, and that non-US governments cared about this issue as well. He said, "The fact people are already abusing the technology suggests that they will be forced to go the crypted settings route for next generation hardware anyway." And added, "I talked to one vendor about this stuff and fingers crossed we will see open drivers except for the radio module. In the longer term I suspect vendors will move to signed register sets, so you can load "US 802.11g" but you can't load "police frequency, full power""

At some point Bas suggested that if these vendors were really willing to release their specs, but were only holding back to satisfy government agencies, then maybe they could release some binary drivers in the interim. Martin replied to this, "I totally agree on this. A binary driver could better than nothing at this point. Another thing that wonders me, is why companies like Broadcom, if they are so open to releasing the drivers at some point, where they can make the regulation agencies somewhat happy, are so ignorant then. I've heard of serveral people, that tried to get a statement on the possibilty for Linux drivers from then and the return is nothing. I've actually tried myself. No response at all."

Elsewhere, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger's eyes lit up at the prospect of transmitting on military frequencies. He said he "wants binary only driver for these cards to build opensource driver with ability to set "interesting" frequency range." Martin said, "It's there for Windows." And at some point, Richard B. Johnson said:

Contrary to popular opinion, there is no FCC regulation prohibiting one from receiving some particular frequency. There is, however, a federal law prohibiting the disclosure of a radio message by a third party. This means that the media, or even law enforcement can't listen to a private radio (cell phone) conversation and then disc

Re:FYI incaseof /. fx

[Anonymous Coward]

The article ahs 2 mirrors, and as of now, the original site shows no sign of slashdotting. This is redundant. Please mod it accordingly

Why not simply make it illegal to operate?

[Fefe]

I can buy a regular transmitter and modify it to transmit on a forbidden frequency. Does that mean we can't sell transmitters or books telling people how to build one? No!

I think this is a straw man argument.

Re:Why not simply make it illegal to operate?

[stratjakt]

I can buy a regular transmitter and modify it to transmit on a forbidden frequency.

No you cant. You can buy one and modify it, or build your own (as ham operators do).

You can buy a device to recieve whatever (ie; police scanners at radio shack), since public broadcasts are public property, but not to transmit over them.

Re:Why not simply make it illegal to operate?

[alienw]

Don't expect the manufacturer to help you modify it, though. If you want to do that, you would have to reverse-engineer the radio yourself. Then you can do whatever to it. Similarly, if you reverse-engineer a wifi driver, you can write your own. It's just that the manufacturer won't help you.

Re:Why not simply make it illegal to operate?

[liquidsin]

Yeah, but reverse engineering the wifi driver is now illegal (in the U.S.) so you can't really write your own (in the U.S.)

Re:Why not simply make it illegal to operate?

[alienw]

Since when is that so? I haven't heard of too many laws prohibiting reverse engineering. You may not be able to legally disassemble their drivers, since that is probably a part of the license you get them under, but reverse engineering the chips by other means (hooking up a logic analyzer, using software to monitor the drivers, etc) should be ok.

Things to do with software radio

[Dark Coder]

1. Listen to a baby cry over your neighbors' baby monitor.
2. Neighbor humping a lover in front of their baby monitor
3. Transmitting "Hey, that's my wife; I'm going to blow your balls off!"
4. Watch them scatter

Re:Things to do with software radio

[kiwimate]

5. Play silly buggers with British air traffic.

Re:Things to do with software radio

[Anonymous Coward]

5) ???
6) PROFIT!

illegal Radio Operation

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah - that reminds me of the wifi combo card Im using - its a prototype card that I've had for about 3 months that does A, B, and G. The software limits radio strength normally based on the country that you're in due to FCC regulations. However, the developer software allows you to set the power transmit - something thats actually illegal according to the FCC (the consumer is not allowed to sett the power level of the card).

It revolves around the business model

[jj_johny]

I was looking into doing some WLAN engineering but found that it was too difficult to do without getting hold of the documents. Since these chips are used primarily in high volume applications - i.e. OEMs using 10 of thousands at a time - the manufacturers don't give out the specs to the public. First, they don't want to deal with questions from someone who is not paying them for their engineering support services. And second, they don't want the competition getting hold of the future direction in the product that may be hinted at in their technical documentation. All the manufacturers that I know of require you to sign an NDA to get a copy.

The only real leverage that anyone has is only buying products that have explicit Linux support from the OEM.

wireless

[mschoolbus]

I own a 3com Airconnect PCMCIA wireless card and even though there are open source drivers made for it, I still have a helluva time ever getting that card to work.

Why is it so hard to make a decent driver that works well and is easy to configure? Is there some sort of problem dealing with Linux as compared to Windows that makes it so tough? Or is it simply because of supply and demand?

Re:wireless

[boredMDer]

Supply and demand, basically.

Think about it. Most computers out there are running Windows, so what do the companies support? Of course, the majority of platforms. They figure, so what if the 'linux geeks' don't get what they want, they can just hack their own driver if they want to use this hardware.
That is to say, if they even think about other operating systems at all...
Since there is basically like no commercial support for this kind of hardware on linux, people like those that started the wlan-ng project must create drivers themselves.

Now, comparing to the companies or what have you that produce these cards, the hackers that write these drivers don't exactly have all the resources that the companies do with respect to with technical data on the hardware, testing, etc.

Also, as I've seen so many of the linux distros out there are different, that there may be compatibility issues of some sort or another when using the driver. As far as windows, however, there are only what, 5 or 6 versions that drivers have to be made and tested for...

I dunno, just a thought or two.

Re:wireless

[mschoolbus]

Would companies allow developers to sign an NDA so they could have access to most of the hardware's specification data to write a driver? In doing so, would a company force the driver to be closed source and maybe the company have exclusive rights to it? Or do companies just not allow people to do this cause of IP reasons?

Re:wireless

[boredMDer]

Well think about it, with the NDA signed, there is no way (AFAIK) that they'd let the driver be open source.

Re:wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to XFree/gatos guys, they signed NDA with ATI and yet their driver is open source.

Only TCPA-compliant systems

[karlandtanya]

Will be allowed to use these.

Any other use will be considered a federal crime. You are a terrorist. Those convicted will be required to purchase and install a copy of Microsoft's current OS for each CPU they own. Too bad if you have a SMP system.

Re:Only TCPA-compliant systems

[Loosewire]

Too bad if you have a SMP system.
Smp systems?

Re:Only TCPA-compliant systems

[cfallin]

Smp systems?

Symmetric multiprocessor - two or more processors sharing a common memory space and peripherals (sometimes a common FSB too). Basically, all multiprocessor PCs.

Re:Only TCPA-compliant systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, you putz.

Having worked in the field before...

[mindstrm]

with 2.4Ghz ISM wireless network stuff, anyway... on the manufacturing & design side...

This is something I hadn't thought of in terms of software. I mean, if you make, say, a wireless router, there are various laws you have to follow to get approval in various places.. things like :

The antenna connector has to be non-standard. This is why you'll see like, a TNC conenctor with the threads reversed, or the gender parts half swapped, etc. It's so consmers don't hook it up to amplifiers and things.. or rather, so they understand that they are not supposed to. The same goes for software functions.. there are many functions accessible in the software that would allowt eh device to operate outside of the allowabloe parameters, but we had to keep those hidden & inaccessible. If they were presented to the customer, the customer woudl be able to violate FCC just by using commands we supplied them.

So.. I never considered that with regards to linux drivers.. but it is a good point.

Re:Having worked in the field before...

[DMDx86]

Why can't the frequency band and power be enforced in hardware?

Re:Having worked in the field before...

[buysse]

Every country has different rules...

Re:Having worked in the field before...

[DMDx86]

so.. make different firmware or versions of the card as needed

Re:Having worked in the field before...

[bdc0]

Different versions of the firmware defeats the purpose of the parent post. It was sugested to put the checking in the hardware.
Different versions of the card reduces economies of scale and adds logistics problems (order too many of contry U, but not enough of country F even though total order is ok).
An additional reason to make it hard to change parameters is liability if someone "tweaks" power and causes interference and someone sues.

Re:Having worked in the field before...

[mindstrm]

It can, of course.. but the chipsets in use are more generic than you would like.

Promotion?

[yerricde]

If that 95% wants 100% interoperability

How will advocates convince home users (a large chunk of that 95%) to want to interoperate with something they will never buy?

Re:Promotion?

[ocelotbob]

Simple. More and more of that 95% is actually purchasing said product, even if they don't know it. Linux is fairly significant in the embedded market, with products like TiVO using it to run everything. Explain to the user that they can't use their broadband/wireless setup to pull listings because companies like Intel won't release the specs, and more people are going to be upset and ask for answers.

Though this whole thing seems silly to me anyways. Why don't the broadband chipset makers just provide the specs on how to load a binary firmware. I'm using it right now in order to use my cheap USB<-Serial adapter, I'm certain thatproviding a binary firmware isn't going to upset anyone other than the most hardcore GPL only people.

Re:Promotion?

[ivan256]

How will advocates convince home users (a large chunk of that 95%)

Home users are not the issue here (and not the largest part of the 95% anyways). Businesses that may have, internally, 99% of their hardware running windows and 1% and growing running something else may choose another manufacturer's product because it supports 100% of thir machines. All you need to loose is one big sale and it would have been worthwhile to pay a developer a few thousand dollars to write a Linux driver. Are you saying companies should give up on trying to maximize profits, and start shooting for 95% instead?

Re:Promotion?

[stratjakt]

Proprietary drivers for embedded linux exists. What doesnt exist is a GPL'ed free-as-in-pigeon-turds driver for hobbyists.

Re:Promotion?

[ckaminski]

Which doesn't necessarily bother me. I'm not against companies trying to make money and/or protect their stuff if their not abusing the law to do so. If said company doesn't want to make a driver public, they don't have to. But I'd like at least SOME driver support. And if their not willing to do drivers for all platforms, then by golly, they should at least tell *ME* how to do it myself.

Even if I fuck it up, I'm still better off, because maybe YOU can do it better than me, but no one can do it well if no one has the info to at least try.

Protecting PR is one thing. Constraining your customers by being lazy is another.

Re:Promotion?

[njchick]

Providing firmware and the code to load it is insufficient to write a working Linux driver. The driver should be able to communicate with the firmware to transfer data and configure the device. That's what is missing and not the firmware. In fact, the firmware can be extracted in many cases from Windows drivers.

If radio broadcasts are public property...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's to stop someone from de-crypting Direct TV, or helping themselves to the rights of the newest American Idol broadcast?

It seems that the two are mutually exclusive; you can't have public radio waves, and you can't outlaw recieving signals.

Re:If radio broadcasts are public property...

[stratjakt]

You can recieve DirecTV all you want, but to decrypt you have to use stolen IP from Hughes (or whoever) in the form of the hacked keys on the smartcard.

IIRC, satellite is a microwave device and falls under the "shaped wave" clauses as well, I dunno, I ain't an FCC guy.

BTW, and American Idol is broadcast absolutely free on your local Fox affiliate. Help yourself.

Wires

[stratjakt]

Wires are where it's at.

No problem getting the specs. You want CAT5e? CAT6? RS-232? How about some coax?

Be it twisted pair, fibre optic, stranded, or even tin cans on a string, wires are the future.

the _REAL_ reason for no drivers...

[kwj8fty1]

Many of the chipset makers feel that their 'drivers' are also their IP. In the wireless space, the first to market folks get to make the rules. In the case of 802.11a, Atheros was the first to market. There existed a 'binary only' driver that was built on a mandrake linux box. The bad news is the way it was built made it completely useless. I've not heard of anyone having sucuess using it. Rumor has it that Atheros built this driver & they would release 'formal' drivers for their chipsets. This hasn't happened yet. I doubt it will until they have somebody else providing 802.11a chipsets. To them, it's about getting market share & protecting IP.

Recent developments:

Reyk Floeter has started building a GPL driver. It's amusing based on the context of this article, because all this driver can do is SNIFF. That's right, RX Only. Progress has been very slow, and there have been several questions to the list as to how this driver exists, and how it's being built. It would seem that Reyk doesn't have any of the specs & hasn't signed an NDA. I assume he's reverse engineering the windows drivers, but he hasn't stated as much. The development progress has been _VERY_ slow, and this project needs help from OSS devs. Anyone up for a challenge?

Intellegraphics signed the NDA, and has a driver 'for sale'.

While the government has it's paws in everything, I doubt this is the case at this point. This whole article is based on FUD.

That's all. -Eric Johanson, SeattleWireless

Re:the _REAL_ reason for no drivers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that Reyk's driver is for the 5210, which is Atheros' first generation 802.11a only radio. (And it only supports the lower and middle UNII band.) Cards based on this chip are getting hard to find, as now the 5211 and 5212 are out that support A/B/G. (Not to minimize the Reyk's effort, but by the time this is completed, you may not be able to buy a card that it supports.)

Intelligraphics has a linux driver, but note that they are not licensing the source - that is extra, and you also have to be an Atheros licensee. The required Atheros license is about 50K (and includes windows driver source and specifications).

Vitek (formerly Stellcom) also sells linux drivers under similar terms.

The terms of the Atheros license are fairly anti-open source, as they state that their code may not be 'used with open source software', or something very similar. Even if you pay the money for the licenses and drivers, you still couldn't legitimately release the source code. If these cards do get linux support, they will likely be like the Nvidia drivers - binary with some kind of wrapper. This also means that non-Intel platforms will be poorly support if at all.

Unless one of the manufacturers steps up and releases the documents or a linux driver in source, it is going to take some SERIOUS reverse engineering effort to develop a full featured and reliable driver.

Re:the _REAL_ reason for no drivers...

[FuzzyDaddy]

Many of the chipset makers feel that their 'drivers' are also their IP

I believe this is the main reason for the lack of driver support. I was at some trade show or the other, and I asked a wireless ethernet card vendor if they had Linux support. The reply was that the software driver was a significant part of the engineering effort, and they considered it a big part of their "value added".

Re:the _REAL_ reason for no drivers...

[Anonymous Coward]

All I'm gonna say is fuck these dirty niggers and their "value added" niggerdom.

FFFCCP!

[Anonymous Coward]

First Fuck the FCC Post!

Re:wireless-Low road, high road.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone has basically answered your question. Reverse engineering hardware-software is hard. Manufacturers uncooperativeness doesn't help. Even if one has all the details, writing a driver and debugging it is hard. Maybe what some of the OSS crowd needs to do is go into the hardware business?

Completely Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the cards shouldn't have even entered onto the market without cryptographically signed registers! Why? Because if all it takes is a few erroneous bits (read crash) to be out of place to completely wipe out local emergency communications or a rather unpleasant virus (they released windows drivers!), we are really in trouble. I am amazed that manufacturers got this through approvals. As far as linux driver issues are concerned, I don't think this will enhance the inherant risks in any way. If a hacker wants to abuse this feature, they will work out how. Now, what was the resonant frequency of water again ?

Re:Completely Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.eng-tips.com/gpviewthread.cfm/qid/1866/ pid/466/lev2/19/lev3/64

Re:Anal Cocks

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU FAIL IT!

Doop of Earl...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, go easy on him! This is slashdot, we don't learn it until Taco posts the story three times times times!

From Broadcom's site...

[wumarkus420]

What I don't understand is why this page on Broadcom's site specifies that there are available embedded Linux drivers, yet they are nowhere to be found.

Re:From Broadcom's site...

[Anonymous Coward]

They're proprietary, for embedded linux from commercial vendors (like a Zaurus or tivo or the like).

Linux != Free for all moochers

Wires in the SKY maaan... wires in the sky...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the ticket, maaan... we want our wires in the SKY and we don't want them any other way dude.

Doesn't explain it all!

[rMortyH]

I have been buying 802.11 cards like crazy trying to find one that will work well with Linux for mobile self-propelled linux boxes.

WHat I have found is that almost all the new cards out there, brand name, no name, etc, are based on the broadcom chip, for which there is no driver.

Now it's true that there are wierd FCC rules, such as the one that the antenna connectors must be proprietary, as if that makes a difference, but that doesn't explain certain things.

For instance, the SMC, Siemens, and Linksys cards all USED to work. The new cards from these vendors, such as the Linksys WPC11, don't work, but have the SAME MODEL NUMBER even though they are entirely different cards. They all give the same codes or similar when inserted, they all have similar antenna shapes, they all have two dimples in the bottom of the antenna where one dimple has a bump from the injection molder.

Now, the only difference I can see on the BOX between the old and the new ones is that the new ones mention Windows XP. So, can it be that MS would only support chipsets with proprietary specs? It sure looks that way. I really can't understand why multiple vendors would completely change the card and keep the same model number. This makes no sense. I think it's as simple as not supporting linux compatible hardware in each release of windows. Not so far fetched, how many product boxes do you see that even MENTION linux? You're not gonna get that 'designed for windows XP' logo if you don't do as you're told.

Now, the older cards work just fine, I have a prism card and it's great. Problem is I only have one, which serves no purpose at all. ALso, aparantly the Netgear card DOES work, but not well, under linux, and Cisco's Aironets are supposed to work fine, though they cost twice as much and I'll gladly pay, but I have yet to find a retail channel for these (help)

So I've bought six different types of cards ranging in price from $49 to $79 and they are ALL broadcom products. You can see the similarities in the physical construction of the card as soon as you take it out of the box. Slight differences in antenna shape, but always with the broadcommy squareness.

Also, you can order parts real cheap and configure them to put out a carrier on any frequency you want, so this really sounds like baloney. Not that it isn't the reason they're giving, but it isn't the reason. We're talking about less than 0.1 watt here. If the military doesn't like the signal they can just move to the livingroom. Seems to block it just fine from my experience.

So I have an awesome little laptop robot and I can only control it from windows or mac and I have another one that I haven't even bothered with because I can't operate them at the same time.

I don't feel very free to innovate.

Re:Doesn't explain it all!

[terracon]

The uber card
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.asp ?Produ ctID=268977

Re:Doesn't explain it all!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are are SURE about your allegations and can provide the evidence, it's pretty strong anecdotally to show some industry collusion, perhaps also involving a certain large company, which is supposed to be illegal, and I mean beyond civil into criminal. It's enough to maybe interest a prosecutor, if you can find one that is, which may be doubtful in this political climate now. You can run it by the EFF perhaps, see what they say. It's right teetering there on the edge between legal/illegal just from this surface look. It is quite suspicious. Potentially it could be quite big.

Re:Doesn't explain it all!

[cybersquid]

I'm using an older Cisco (Aeronet )340 base station and PCMCIA card at home. At work we have the 350 basestations and a mix of 340 & 350 cards. We also have some IBM notebooks with "built-in" mini-pci Aeronet cards.

All work for me from my notebook (IBM T30). I'm running RedHat 7.3 and the Cisco Linux drivers.

However, I have heard that installing the latest Windows driver will "upgrade" the card firmware in such a way that it won't work with the Linux driver anymore. Some folks have had to down grade. Perhaps this has been fixed by now?

Annoyingly, it seems the Win driver will re-update the card whenever it is booted. This is only a problem for those with dual-boot notebooks.

I ordered mine directly from their web site cisco.com.

Re:Doesn't explain it all!

[Anonymous Coward]

do some research man, the majority of the companies you list DO NOT MAKE WIRELESS CHIPSETS. They buy the chipset, but it on a board (usually a reference design) and sell it. Don't go off of manufacturer or model number, because that doesn't mean crap. Go off of chipset.

Re:Doesn't explain it all!

[twinpot]

I use a sitecom card (802.11b) with the atmel chipset. Drivers are available on sourcforge, and seem to work quite well. (Using SuSE 8.1). In fact, the drivers work better than the windows ones!

So very true...

[GarfBond]

I'm going to give up mod points here just to chime in, since this is an issue I care about.

Anyone looking to get good wireless card support (802.11b) should buy one with a prism2 chip or an Orinoco. I know many that have had good luck with these cards, and I know for a fact that the Orinoco cards are essentially plug and play in linux. Do NOT buy the TI chipsets (sometimes marketed as 22mbps 802.11b+) or the Broadcom chipsets; word on the street (heh) is that these companies have been less than forthcoming with specs so people can write proper drivers for them.

It's too bad that this is the sad state of wireless support in linux, that we must be at the manufacturer's mercy to get our hardware working properly. I've been waiting for 2 years now to get my USB wireless card (oh yeah, avoid those too if you can) working in linux, and it's all because the company doesn't care.

Re:So very true...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wow, you gave up mod points. How heroic.

Loser.

Re:So very true...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as big of losers as we are for posting stupid comments about how stupid something is, stupid

Re:So very true...

[philfr]

Hey, don't forget Atmel's chipset based ones. Atmel released their drivers as open source and both USB and PCMCIA hardware works OK. See Atmel WLAN driver page

Re:So very true...

[Quantum Skyline]

Anyone looking to get good wireless card support (802.11b) should buy one with a prism2 chip or an Orinoco. I know many that have had good luck with these cards, and I know for a fact that the Orinoco cards are essentially plug and play in linux. Do NOT buy the TI chipsets (sometimes marketed as 22mbps 802.11b+) or the Broadcom chipsets; word on the street (heh) is that these companies have been less than forthcoming with specs so people can write proper drivers for them.

Easier said than done. D-Link and Linksys have discontinued their wireless cards that are NOT Broadcom based. Consequently, you cannot buy the D-Link DWL-520 or the Linksys WPC11 pre-2.7 cards. SMC cards have little or no support, and the 2602 model is impossible to find in Toronto. The only other option is Microsoft cards, which we all know won't work under Linux.

My advice: If you are starting out with wireless and Linux, forget it. For now.

Why does every vendor do the same thing?

[Wesley Felter]

It seems a little suspicious that 802.11b chipsets had none of these problems, but suddenly with a and g every vendor has a programmable radio and thus open source drivers can never be released.

SDRs and frequencies

[Andy Dodd]

Most of these cards have internal restrictions (such as firmware) preventing out-of-band operation. At least Prisms do.

Even with wide-open drivers, I don't think you can force most Prism cards out-of-band because the firmware restricts it. (Which sucks, because all it takes is a 55-question multiple choice test and you can legally run 802.11 cards out of the ISM band and at much higher powers - The 2.4 GHz amateur (ham) band is adjacent to the ISM band, and many cards can be reclassified under Part 97 rules.)

What I would love to see is open specs for a cable modem chipset - it would make a perfect exciter for an amateur data network if combined with a transverter.

Re:SDRs and frequencies

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the 13cm amateur band is 2300-2310 AND 2390-2450MHz - we lost the 2310-2390 segment to the digital broadcasters (Sirius/XM).

Amateurs are primary users in some portions, and secondary in others, but in all cases are considered a licensed service, whereas Part 15 devices, such as the LAN cards under discussion, are not, and therefore the amateur service outranks them.

It sounds like these LAN cards are poorly designed since they require so many things to be done under software - too many things, in fact. Maybe if they were designed to be more autonomous, they would impose less of an overhead on their host systems, and make for more efficient computing overall. Of course, that's too easy - as many others have mentioned, it's the old battle of WinModems versus real ones. Or, in this case, Windows versus a real operating system.

Read the linked article, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

People, come on, RTFA, ok?

This is not about 802.11b, it's about 802.11g, the newer standard. The one that can do 54 Mbps? Look arround for drivers for those chipsets (mostly Broadcom or Intel's). You'll find none. Why? Because these things can be programmed to receive *and* transmit on any frequency. Any. That inclues military frequencies. Building a receiver for any frequency is not rocket science. In fact it's boring since it's well known. The problem is that the FCC has to approve this things. The vendor builds it and they have to get approval from the FCC to market it. If the FCC catches word that the vendor is giving the specs to a bunch of hippies, the hardware might not get approved (nothing to do with the FCC per se, it's just politics). The problem is some people out there are _very_ willing to go on a disrupt police communications. And what could be easier that just taking a laptop on a car and just war drive. It gives a whole new meaning to the term, doesn't it?

Some people (RTFA) have proposed solutions, basically signed frequency tables, but since the hardware is out, it's too fscking late. That's going to be in the next gen hardware, but not in the current round. By the look of it, 802.11g on Linux is screwed for the time being.

Re:Read the linked article, please.

[iabervon]

The FCC doesn't care if you give out the specs; the FCC just cares that there not be any way to send on restricted frequencies (and they'd like it if you can't receive on other restricted frequencies, either, at least not without knowing you're on a restricted frequency, so you can obey the law on disclosure of what you get).

Basically, the card makers may some stuff configurable which shouldn't be configurable, and they need to deal with getting it configured in the legal way by default. The tricky thing is that there isn't a universal legal default.

The situation is that it's illegal to disrupt police communications, and it's pretty easy, but it's also pretty obvious. If you're doing it, they can trivially track you down and arrest you. The manufacturer gets in trouble if you're doing it with an unmodified transmitter, because you might not realize you're breaking the law. If anyone who uses the SuSE driver for a Broadcom card (configured, of course, for Germany) in the US is breaking the law and causing problems for the police, someone will get in trouble, and it's likely to be Broadcom.

Re:Read the linked article, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

The police uses VHF in most countries, that means 30-300 MHz. Wi-fi is somewhere above 2.4 GHz. A normal transmitter is not very broadbanded. A transmitter gets more expensive to make for every MHz it covers and i have not yet heard about any transmitters broader then a houndred MHz or so. That means it's simply impossible that a card like that would be so broadbanded.

Re:Read the linked article, please.

[kinnell]

I have to wonder, though, whether this is a sensible approach to take. People can still write drivers for stuff even if they don't have the specs, and this has been done often for linux drivers. It's just a lot more difficult. Making it difficult isn't going to stop people from being able to do it. IMHO, they would be much better off providing the information, and prosecuting anybody abuses it - that way they don't have to deal with well meaning hackers who are accidentally broadcasting illegally while trying to figure out how the hardware works. Catching people who are broadcasting on illegal frequencies is not difficult - this is a problem which has been around for a long time. But like you say, it's just politics. Appearing to do the right thing is much more important than doing the right thing.

Re:Read the linked article, please.

[chill]

802.11g is screwed anyway, considering in the latest IEEE revision of the draft it is no longer 54 MBps but more along the line of 10-24, depending on 802.11b interoperability or not. You want 54 MBps then you do 802.11a.

WPC11 card.

[mhore]

Works fine for me. All I had to do was go into one of the config files and enter the card specifics and then use the Orinoco driver.

I had problems with it disconnecting and then having a fit (i.e. printing error messages at like 50 million per second). I upgraded my wireless drivers and that took care of it.

Just an FYI in case anybody wants to use that card.

Re:WPC11 card.

[swb]

I had a WMP11 from Linksys that used the new Broadcum chipset and I couldn't get it to work in any of the Intel i815 systems I tried it in.

The Compaq system melted down as soon as the driver was loaded -- by melted down, the screen went black except for small, wavy diagonal green lines, as if it was a TV on the fritz.

The HP system would load the drivers OK, but the drivers didn't think there was any card installed!

It was my first exposure to wireless, and now I'm kind of soured on it.

Re:WPC11 card.

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to check what version the wpc11 card is.
Ver 2.5 has the prism 2.5 chipset in it
Version 3.0 has the prism 3 chipset in it.
Both these work fine with linux - or even with microcontrollers if you are so inclined. WiFi SniFi
The new ones, ver. 4 use a different chipset - broadcom it seems. Moral of the story - confirm what version the card is. (Don't know if the box always says, but the cards that I have seen are clearly labelled.)

Exactly

[FreeLinux]

It's all about the money. People seem to be unwilling to accept that Linux is such a tiny segment of users, that it is simply not worth the effort for a hardware manufacturer to develop a Linux driver, let alone multiple drivers for Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Gentoo, Debian, etc. with kernel versions 2.4.1, 2.4.8, 2.4.12, 2.4.18, 2.4.21 etc.

These same poeple also refuse to see that the chip manufacturers make their money by selling the chips and the software that drives them. Releasing the chip specs, in many manufacturer's minds, gives their competition an advatage because said competition will have access to the specs too. Theoretically, the competition could then build a similar chip for less or even a better chip without as much expenditure for R&D.

Regardless of the truth on this matter there is simply no economic incentive for the manufacturer to release the specs. It has nothing to do with military secrets or national security or anything else, it is simply a matter of economics. But, all is not lost. As Linux continues to grow and its "market share" increases the economic incentive will increase for manufacturers to develop the drivers or release the specs.

Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can increase sales by 5% just by releasing some technical documents, wouldn't that seem like good financial sense to you?

(Of course, it won't be quite 5%, it will be more-- since linux users tend to be of the demographic group most likely to use something like WiFi..)

Re:Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the majority of linux use is on the servers, the use of WiFi on Linux sounds like less than the 5%, not more.

it's not hard

[g4dget]

Get a supported card and the regular drivers (not wlan-ng), then type:

iwconfig eth1 essid your-id
iwconfig eth1 key s:your-password
iwconfig eth1 mode Managed

(Substitute your actual device for eth1.) That's all you need. Afterwards, use whatever you use to configure a wired Ethernet card (pump, dhclient, ifconfig).

All the rest (configuration files, etc.) is just distribution-related fluff.

It was why I punted RH8 on my laptop

[Matey-O]

I needed a new router/firewall/AP, I bought the linksys g product, a couple of G cards, spent an afternoon looking for Broadcom support in linux and pitched Redhat for WXp as a result.

That laptop is mostly used for surfing the web and rdesktopping into other computers, I'd most likely put RH8 (9) BACK on it if Broadcom's g set was supported.

I can't be the only person that WANTS this. (and I DID lobby Broadcom and Linksys for driver support)

G band not finalized yet.

[zin]

Maybe they aren't limiting the broadcast characteristics in firmware on the broadcomm G cards because they don't have a final spec yet and they are trying to keep the device/chipset as open as posisble so they can adapt to new changes in the specs if need be. I just wish that I could get it to work on my damn linux box cause right now I am running in mixed mode on my home wireless network.

ZiN

Yet Another Shining Example

[filmcritic]

Of the endless game the "open source commode (sorry, community)" will play until it's dead and buried - the catch up/me too game. Here we have the "community" with their mouths open trying to shout down the eeeevil hardware companies for not allowing them to look at their specs, when the other 90 or so percent of the world already has working drivers. Several months ago the G hardware was made available and put to use...and it took this long for the "community" to get wind that there are no drivers for their toy OS?

Put the tissues away and get with the program - companies don't care about your complaints because they don't make a nickel supporting communistic operating systems. Wake up, linux will never win and will always play catch up...maybe in 2005 you'll be able to enjoy your 802.11g cards. Think that's a joke? Look at when Carmack released the source to Doom and Quake...long after ID made it's cash and long after those games were even relevent. That's how things go when you play with a toy OS.

Re:Yet Another Shining Example

[nburtner]

Carmack released the source for Doom and Quake (and Quake II) after they'd finish their run, yes, but long, long before that there had been Linux versions of Doom, Doom II, Quake, Quake II, AND Quake III for a long, long time. Remember, Quake III had a linux port that shipped the same time as the Windows and Mac ports, and they're planning a Linux port for Doom III as well.

Please get your facts straight before making comments like that...I mean, a quick google would have told you about the Linux ports of those games.

Carmack releasing the source to the Dooms and the Quakes is just his way of giving back to the community that buys the games, makes the mods, and keeps playing. And its a nice way for the mod makers to create even better mods (since they have access to the engine code, and can extend it however they want).

Have a nice day.

Re:Yet Another Shining Example

[mabhatter654]

Of sloppy, cheap marketing and rushed engineering instead of solid hardware design!
This is like winmodems. They are "cheaper" just to save a few dimes instead of being truly independant devices. They want to save a buck by making these wireless cards merely transmitters, and relying on the embedding company to "finish" the product. The integrators don't want to share, because they all use the same chips, so software is the only defining quality between their products! Unfortunately, this doesn't look like it will change any time soon. BillyG has every one addicted to cheap hardware instead of paying for quality.

a bit ridiculous?

[saiha]

This seems a bit ridiculous seeing as how I can purchase or buy other devices that with little modification broadcasts over illegal frequencies. Even if they do hide the specs, the people that would want to access the frequency programming interface for "evil" purposes probably will anyway and the people who need to for legitimate purposes will just be pissed off.

They can do like proxim w/ rangelan/sympony cards

[PalmKiller]

Proxim let a developer take a library written by them custom for him that allows him certain functions that he needs, it works with pcmcia, isa and pci cards. he just wrote a wrapper around this library and has no access to the internal workings of the actual chipset to protect their details for security I suppose. Maybe he can help someone find the way with these new chip makers since he worked out a deal with another company that was not going to release the internal details. From what I gathered from back when I used one, they built him the library and gave him the headers.

His source code distribution with prebuilt library is at:

http://www.komacke.com/distribution.html

I was able to use it for my laptop with a pcmcia card, my smp machine with pci card and pentium with an isa card on 2.2 and 2.4 kernels so the method obviously will work.

Oooo

[Cyno]

I like the thought of suing companies for trespassing on my private property with their private radio transmissions.

I want to the FCC to made all radio signals private property so I can sue every radio station, police station, local TV, my neighbor and her noisy telephone, etc.

Hey, maybe we can declare all audio and electromagnetic transmissions private property so if you say something that offends me I can sue you, if it trespasses into my ear.

I think we should make a set of laws so everyone can sue everyone else. Then just sit back and watch the people line up outside the courthouse. Maybe we could make our legal system a profitable marketplace where you can purchase a new law to help you sue for more money, at a fair price, of course. :)

Re:Oooo

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

I like where you are going with that....first off, it seems like the TV/MPAA/RIAA alliance should be an ally in this fight.....

Sucker them into having their paid whores in congress change the laws, then act with massive lawsuits against all transmitting equipment.....

As mentioned in the article, you can't have it both ways, either it's public for everyone or it's private with the right for me to sue any transmitter for tresspass on my property.....

wireless usb works fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the main problem is lack of end-user info about what's available.

for wireless-usb, look at the pegasus driver set, it works just fine.

Potential for maliciousness...

[dabplana]

So I'm curious if the proliferation of 802.11g wireless cards is going to mean that the next "Code Red" style internet worm is, among other things, going to target the wireless networking drivers for these cards?

Seems to me that thousands of infected laptops, all screaming at full power in the police band might cause a bit of problem for emergency services.

Is anyone familiar enough with emergency services reliance upon wireless communication (and their relative tolerance for interference, which is going to vary based upon the technology they use) to confirm my fears or allow me to sleep a little easier at night?

Closed-Source?

[jobeus]

Okay, so where are the closed source drivers? Though I'd prefer Opensource, I'd really like to get an 802.11g card... But there's no support in Linux yet!

Abstract Driver Model?

[Cobralisk]

So manufacturers don't want to give away design specs. They don't want to maintain 2 versions of a driver either. What kind of effort would it take to abstract the driver model to be OS independent? I'm not talking about overnight stuff here, but why should a driver care about who is talking to it? We have NTFS support on non-MS operating systems due to a virtual file system layer. You can tell me why it can't be done now, but why can't we overcome those obstacles? Maybe it will always just be a matter of speed/code efficiency talking to the hardware...

Re:Abstract Driver Model?

[mabhatter654]

How about abstract hardware?

Why can't some one make a wireless card that acts like the routers. That accepts normal 100Mbs cat5 and automagically makes it wireless? That would seem like the answer as then it would "just work" and the drivers would just be to set the security settings.

The issue may be military radar

[ajs75]

There are potentially serious issues with 5 GHz. WLAN technologies and military radar avoidance. This is the case in both the U.S. and Europe. The IEEE is working on mechanisms to dynamically avoid these conflicts. I can understand why it could be bad to allow anybody out there with one of these devices to twiddle the knobs as they could cause serious problems. This doesn't, in my mind, rule out binary drivers.

Re:So very true...-Binary beat-down.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's too bad that this is the sad state of wireless support in linux, that we must be at the manufacturer's mercy to get our hardware working properly. I've been waiting for 2 years now to get my USB wireless card (oh yeah, avoid those too if you can) working in linux, and it's all because the company doesn't care."

Now you know why I'm against proprietary binary drivers i.e Nvidia. All it takes is a corporate decision to turn a positive to a negative, and the same for the reverse. Those who forget history are doomed to taking the class again.

TI drivers

[orv]

True about the lack of TI drivers. Of course its much more fun to buy one and then write the drivers yourself!... acx100.sf.net

I'm sorry -- you're right.

[mhore]

I got the chipsets mixed up.

IP argument

[feenberg]

The IP argument for no Linux drivers seems a little odd. After all, they give away the binary drivers for windows, presumably in order to enhance the salability of the hardward. Of course, there are fewer Linux users, so you wouldn't expect every chip maker to produce a binary driver for Linux, but consider the position of some chipmaker whose market share is 5%. Adding Linux support would double his sales, (at least to start with.

Source code may be subject to other arguments, but it is truely odd that there are no binary drivers.

Re:IP argument

[LarsG]

The IP argument for no Linux drivers seems a little odd.

A lot of the hard stuff presumably (hard to verify this without specs) happens in the driver instead of in the hardware. So by releasing source they think that their competitors get an upper hand.

Even the Windows Centrino Drivers Have Problems...

[jpmoney]

I recently picked up a Sony Z1A with Centrino wireless built in. Its a great laptop though I'm still figuring out all the Linux stuff for it. I gave up on linux support for wireless after figuring out that the windows drivers don't even work well. They're great UNLESS you have other networks in the area.

For example, I have my home wireless network and my neighbor also has one that my laptop picks up. Because Centrino is "smart" enough to be "seamless" across networks, 5 minutes after connecting to my own network, windows lets me know that there are other networks available, prompts me to look at them, AND cuts off the current network connection!

Essentially the network connection must be reset every 4-5 minutes because it is being "smart" and cutting service at the sign of another provider.

I made it to a Sony Engineer (for fun) and they had no possible solution. I really just want to tell the network driver and/or built in windows wireless software to hold onto a network connection once its established... but NOOOOO, it wants to ask me to look at more and drops me from my current network.

The Sony guy tried to tell me that it would be okay. Riiiight, since I can't do anythign (IM, ftp, etc) that takes longer than 5 minutes to complete.

And this is in Windows...

Re:*BSD IS DYING

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact: BSD is NOT dying.

Fact: You seriously need to get a hobby.

What's your problem with BSD since you post this article over and over again? What, too complicated for you, Mr.Gates Junior?

Secret because of the military?

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

I know when I proposed that my Marine unit use wireless instead of running Cat5 everywhere out in the open while on unit field ops, I got shot down quicker than hell because wireless isn't secure enough to meet our standards. Anyway, I know the Marine Corps won't be using wireless for a long while. Can't comment on other services.

Re:Secret because of the military?

[Wakkow]

If you run everything through a encrypted VPN, then the built-in wireless security is somewhat irrelevant, right?

Re:Secret because of the military?

[ocelotbob]

2 issues here. First one is that the military, among other interests, is concerned that some nefarious person is going to use a wifi card to disrupt military communications. By being able to tune the output frequency, someone could, in theory, jam communications with a $50 off the shelf card. As you've said you're a .mil type, I'm certain you can see that this would be a bad thing.

Also, I'm interested in what your proposal entailed. Did you cover all the bases - using SSL or another tunnelling protocol to ensure proper fingerprinting/security? Yes, built-in wifi security is shit, but that can easily be overcome through the use of proxies and software-based security measures.

Re:Secret because of the military?

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

I proposed a VPN just for our non-secure intranet not our classfied gov't only secure internet. Basically it was shot down using 2 excuses:
-no one is trained on how to set it up (easy!)
-not certified by higher authority (catch all excuse)

Re:Secret because of the military?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it that hard to see their p.o.v.?

On one hand, you have CAT 5, and "out in the open" means visually observed and guarded by carbine-rifle.

On the other hand, you have wireless, where you might have real security, but how do you know?

Re:Secret because of the military?

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole reason is there in the phrase "shot down". Even if the enemy can't decipher your transmission, its mere presence lets them:

Know that you're around,

Determine where you are (direction finding and triangulation),

Know when you're up to something (increased traffic density)
It's a "compromising emanation". "Your son died because the enemy had a WLAN card and a Pringles can."

Attempt being made reverse engineering TI ACX100

[motown]

One of the currently unsupported wireless chipsets is the TI ACX100 chip, the one which features a non-standard 22mbit mode (but is downwards compatible with standard 11mbit 802.11b). This shipset is incorporated in products by SMC and DLink, among others.

This chipset is being reverse-engineered as we speak (or at least a group of brave people is trying hard to).

They are using the same approach that Compaq successfully took decades ago when they were reverse-engineering the IBM BIOS, while preventing legal issues: assigning the task of reverse-engineering and documenting the programming specifications to one group, while having another group, untainted by the reverse-engineered original code, creating a "clean-room" implementation, using only the unencumbered specs obtained from the first group.

Actually, the ACX100 project is divided in three groups, rather than two: one group for reverse-engineering the Windows drivers, a second group for reverse-engineering the (buggy) binary-only Linux drivers, and a third group to use the specs obtained from the other groups to reimplent a driver under a BSD license, which would be free from any IP owned by TI.

The site is here:

http://acx100.sourceforge.net

Apparently, they are having a hard time, although they have made impressive progress so far.

Like with any other useful project, please support these folks if you can! Even if you don't have time, can't code or don't have any money to offer, I'm sure that just giving them some encouragement would keep them motivated. :)

That said, it would indeed save us all a lot of time, effort and frustration if companies in general would simple be more willing to provide the community with the necessary specs to develop drivers. I can't believe the fact that those companies don't realise that there are enough talented people on the planet, who are prepared to develop high quality stable drivers without having to be paid to do so. Therefore, releasing the specs would be a no-brainer to me.

Encryped registers

[Nucleon500]

I read the kernel traffic with this discussion. The Windows binary drivers have already been hacked to allow all this evil recieving and transmitting, and the kernel guys predict that they may have to use signed register sets anyway, which would be good for Linux.

Instead of changing the registers that control frequency directly, you'd point the hardware at a block of memory with a signed register set, and the hardware would only load the registers after verifying the signature. You might still be able to bypass this with some serious hardware surgery, but it'd be enough to keep the Feds off the company's back.

This would be good for open source, because there would be no need to keep the interface secret, as you could only load signed register sets anyway.

time to reward our friends among the vendors

[hopeless case]

I think from now on I am going to go out of my way to buy wireless cards, printers, and other accessories and peripherals only from those manufacturers that have helped make their stuff work with linux whenever I can.

For a long time, most of my stuff would work with linux, but when I started buying wireless cards a few years ago (dlink 650's), I had a hell of a time getting them working.

Does anyone know of a web page that makes it easy to find manufacturers that have actively supported linux?

MOD up, please...

[Tomble]

It's not only funny(ish), it's informative and pretty well on-topic.

Kernel hackers don't seem to understand radios

[crucini]

These kernel hackers seem to think the radio is DC-to-light, and if they got a driver working they could transmit on any frequency. 802.11 is 2.401 GHz to 2.473 Ghz (US & Canada, at least.) Alan Cox says:

I talked to one vendor about this stuff and fingers crossed we will see open drivers except for the radio module. In the longer term I suspect vendors will move to signed register sets, so you can load "US 802.11g" but you can't load "police frequency, full power"

In the US, most police frequencies are mid-UHF (400 MHz area) or 800 MHz. There's not much chance of a 2.4 GHz radio interfering with that. Radio design involves tradeoffs - other things being equal, a radio covering less bandwidth has higher performance. I really doubt that 802.11 radios are capable of much bandwidth outside their designed frequency range. I think this is yet another case of software folks applying the logic of infinite capability to the physical world where capabilities are very restricted.

I can think of reasons for restricting the interface which are less dramatic. First I thought of regulating transmit power - CDMA phones regulate their power based on instructions from the base station. This increases the overall capacity of the system by reducing unneeded transmission. But that doesn't seem to be it, because a google search shows a discussion of controlling 802.11 transmit power in NetBSD..

Then there's information security/crypto export. Maybe an open driver would enable users to use stronger cryptography in generating the spreading sequence. Or maybe it's just natural corporate paranoia.

Some factual corrections to the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to popular opinion, there is no FCC regulation prohibiting one from receiving some particular frequency. There is, however, a federal law prohibiting the disclosure of a radio message by a third party. This means that the media, or even law enforcement can't listen to a private radio (cell phone) conversation and then disclose its content.

Congress passed another law in the mid-1980s that forbids manufacture, import, and sale of receivers capable of hearing cell phone transmissions. This was at the behest of cellular phone companies, who wanted customers to have some faith that analog cell phones had a reasonable level of privacy. So only really dedicated eavesdroppers would be listening in, not the average schmuck with a scanner.

At one time, cell phones used FM at 960 MHz. This could be readily received by receivers designed for Amateur Radio use. For a time, the FCC refused to Type Approve receivers that cover these frequencies. However, most Hams know how to fix their receivers so they can receive whatever they want and Type Approval was only required for receivers that were designed to be sold.

The receivers in question are scanners, not Amateur Radio gear. It applies to ham gear only because some ham gear includes scanner capability as an extra feature. But "police radio" scanners are much more common. And yes, the law still is in effect!

Re:Some factual corrections to the article...

[Muad'Dave]

To shamelessly plug myself...see this comment that links to the ECPA of 1986, and Title 18 USC Sec 2510.

But what about the serial drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

I know OSS is about coders scratching an itch and writing drivers for stuff that they are interested in at the moment, but what about the serial drivers in the 2.5.6x kernel? Many of them are still using cli(), sti() and friends. This is deep juju, too deep for a code cleaner like me to do. Even generic-serial is still using the old method. I can fix other things like 'flags' should be unsigned long, but redoing irq handling needs people who know what is going on.

Centrino not supported under Linux???

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm I was thinking of buying a laptop and uninstalling winxp. Now I'm not so sure...

Might just have to spend the extra dough on an Apple laptop; running OSX.

Hardware's more expensive, but it just works.

Source of the militray BS

[thogard]

The reason for the "protect military coms" is that years ago at teh end of WW2, NATO decided that the 800/900 Mhz should be split so that the military use one half and civilians get the other half. The US used and NATO used an opposite arrangement so that if US troops needed to go in to Europe, their military radios would not interfer with the local military radios.

This happeden on other frequencies as well but most of the WAN frequences are out of the rubbish heap.

2.4 is sort of no-mans land. Until recently it was a useless frequency because its noisy and water absorbs the signal. Because it was mostly unused and unusable it was assigned to the IMS band and opened up. Becaue it was free, the coordless phone people went after it and helped to develop ways of dealing with the issues that only happen at 2.4. Now Wifi does many of the same things.

There are some areas near 3.5 that are Non Line of Sight but only for interference but are very line of sight for the sight for the singal. For some reason a 1 W signal will only go about 2 miles LOS but interference can bounce around for over 30 miles. Most of the 3.5 was sold off to spectrum grabbers and there are a few people putting a few WISP using it since its useless for anything that doesn't have very strong error correction.

5.2/5.8 (802.11a) Is/was used for sat uplinks. Maybe some of them are militray but the US allows both while many places in SE Asia don't. For example Oz allows 5.8 but 5.2 can only be used indoors, NZ allows 5.2 almost like the FCC but 5.8 has some conditions on it.

Re:Even the Windows Centrino Drivers Have Problems

[jci]

I know that if you are using windows xp's zero configuration thing, you can set the priority of networks through advanced properties. If it is working only though the wireless chipset driver, then I'm not sure of what could be done.

Re:Even the Windows Centrino Drivers Have Problems

[jpmoney]

Oh I've tried that... I've had all present networks (four at one time) with mine as the #1 and only mine in the preferred list and it still does the same thing.

Thanks for the attempt at help though - its good to see people reading it.

Exactly.

[mindstrm]

It's not that the companies have to go to extreme lengths to prevent you from violating regs with their hardware, but they do have to take proper measures so joe average does not do so.
Giving open specs to OSS developers might get them in shit.

Linux on Laptops...

[moogla]

Linux support on laptops was pretty bad 3 years ago. Today, we have RedHat 9 on the Thinkpad X30. Works like a charm. Only thing missing is undocking... but I like having two batteries so it's usually a non-issue anyway! If you stay away from the absolutely latest-models, you are likely to get decent laptop support with modern distros, esp. mandrake and redhat. Dell Latitudes, Toshibas, and thinkpads are all pretty well understood cases.

All chipset actulally do have Linux drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

As one of the guys responsible for the efforts, I can state a few simple truths:

1) All chipsets that I know do have the Linux drivers - these are used for embedded development

2) There is no binary-compatible interface for drivers in Linux, therefore these drivers cannot be released in binary form. Due to major incompatibilities between different kernels, binary portability is impossible (and the source one is hard).

3) Since Linux laptop users are close to 0% market, there is no incentive for companies to lose their IP by disclosing the source.

The way out is for Linux maintainers to become a little bit less religious and define binary compatibility - just like about each other OS on the planet does. This is not even "innovation", just common sense.

Once this is done, it would be a slam-dunk for most chipset makers to release a Linux driver in binary form.

PCI Drivers Are Even Harder To Find

[fupeg]

I had been using my iBook and my WinXP laptop from work on my Airport driven home network. I also have a desktop dual booting WinXP and RH8 (now 9.) I picked up a new Belkin 802.11b PCI card on eBay one day and went completely sans wires. I then had a monumental struggle trying to get this to work in Linux, only to give up. That was a couple of months ago and I haven't booted in Linux since.

What is really needed is a definitive how-to website sponsored by a major distro. I've dealt with crazy video card driver and USB device driver issues before in Linux, but nothing was as fucked up as wireless. I had a hell of a time just finding out what chipset my card was using and then trying to find drivers for it. The built in GUI in RH was useless for me.

Of course if there's anybody out there that has had success with this card, ummmm....

Making secure VOIP calls over Wi-FI

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for being a bit off-topic here, but I'd like to ask the experts regarding VOIP and Wi-Fi:

What's currently the best method to make secure VOIP calls over Wi-FI ?
WEP is not secure and many VOIP phones do not support IPSEC or PPTP VPNs thus you need to transmit raw packets but that way anyone with a wireless sniffer can log your conversation.

Is Secure RTP the solution ?
What's the percentage of VOIP phones that support S-RTP ?

Thanks for infos.

Security through obscurity

[oohp]

This is security through obscurity and it doesn't work. Oh wait! There's the DMCA, so maybe it does if developers get arrested for reverse engineering the chips. Anyway. I won't taint my kernel with binary only drivers under obscure EULAs.

The author that cites...

[Muad'Dave]

the Communications Act of 1934 did not do their homework. In 1986, a huge body of law was enacted in the US to "prevent" listening in on cell phone conversations and any other communication "not intended for your receipt". The text of the ECPA is not very useful in itself; you must read the redacted Title Title 18 USC, Sec. 2510.

Just to pick a nit...

[Muad'Dave]

the FCC does not regulate military frequencies. The military has it's own equivalent to the FCC. The two organizations do coordinate, however.

get linux support for 54 g

[Anonymous Coward]

karen.sohl@linksys.com

linksys rep for 54g standards. email and ask about linux drivers.

Re:Even the Windows Centrino Drivers Have Problems

[twinpot]

Win XP does this with only one base station "visible"! The recommended fix from the vendor is to turn of the zero config stuff. Still get drop-outs every now and then. Same on, but to a lesser degree on a win2k laptop

What is very funny is that the Linux drivers (atmel) have no problems at all...Ha!

Anarchists

[Baldrson]

I suspect with articles like this, whether they are true or not, that anarchists will start sharing information over Freenet about how to spew 5Ghz energy from any wall socket -- not even using parts from Radio Shack, which tracks your identity and parts you buy from them (or at least did for all the years I was growing up).

Can't the guvvies figure out something to do that isn't so vulnerable to attack and that doesn't annoy the taxpayers so? Stupid as they are, it's hard to beleive they're _that_ stupid.

Get a wireless bridge

[Anonymous Coward]

You can buy a bridge for the same price as an expensive access card. I have a ps2 and two PC's in my room with a bridge and hub. My ps2 doesn't really support wireless either, are they gonna write a driver for Navy seals socom? NO. get a bridge and shut up. You gotta pay to play.

WET11 Linksys bridge is what I use. I got my D-link card working on redhat with no problems too.

Military doesn't use or care about 802.11. They have that spread spectrum digital battlefield stuff and satellite stuff.