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FSF Certifies Atheros-Based ThinkPenguin 802.11 N USB Adapter

Posted by Soulskill on from the going-free dept.

gnujoshua writes "You may recall that last Fall, the LulzBot AO-100 3D printer was awarded the use of the Free Software Foundation's Respects Your Freedom certification mark. Today, the FSF announced certification of the ThinkPenguin TPE-N150USB, Wireless N USB Adapter, which uses the Atheros ARAR9271 chip. The FSF's RYF certification requirements are focused on the software (not the hardware designs) of a product, which in this case was primarily the device firmware and ath9k-htc module in the Linux-libre kernel. (Disclosure: I work for the FSF.) There's also a cool story that is within this story... which is that the firmware for the Atheros AR9271 chipset was released as a result of a small device seller (ThinkPenguin) striking a deal with a large electronic device manufacturer (Qualcomm Atheros) to build a WLAN USB adapter that shipped with 100% free software firmware. This deal was possible largely because two motivated Qualcomm Atheros employees, Adrian Chadd and Luis Rodriguez, made the internal-push to get the firmware released as free software."

7 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, but $54 for a USB Wifi? by acariquara · · Score: 4, Informative

    Looks like the price of freedom is pretty steep.

    It's not like we are starved for wifi dongles that "just work" on Linux without NDISWrapper. We're not in 2003.

    eg: http://dx.com/p/802-11n-150mbps-wifi-wlan-wireless-network-usb-adapter-53538 $10 bucks including shipping, and there are TONS cheaper than this. I just looked for one that specifically said "Linux compatible".

    --
    Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
    1. Re:Yeah, but $54 for a USB Wifi? by alantus · · Score: 4, Informative

      Looks like the price of freedom is pretty steep.

      It's not like we are starved for wifi dongles that "just work" on Linux without NDISWrapper. We're not in 2003.

      eg: http://dx.com/p/802-11n-150mbps-wifi-wlan-wireless-network-usb-adapter-53538 $10 bucks including shipping, and there are TONS cheaper than this. I just looked for one that specifically said "Linux compatible".

      As a matter of fact, I wish it "just worked".
      I have one of these dongles, and last time I tried to use it I was hitting this bug:
      https://lists.ath9k.org/pipermail/ath9k-devel/2011-November/007467.html

    2. Re:Yeah, but $54 for a USB Wifi? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      As a matter of fact, I wish it "just worked".
      I have one of these dongles, and last time I tried to use it I was hitting this bug:
      https://lists.ath9k.org/pipermail/ath9k-devel/2011-November/007467.html

      This is a bug from November 2011 is against the same chipset. But, it was a module that was loading proprietary firmware.

      The firmware was released as free software within the past couple of months. So, now instead of the ath9k kernel module folks having to treat the firmware as a black box, they can file bugs and submit patches to the firmware itself.

      The reason we certified this device is because it carries freedom to the user. Not arbitrary freedoms, but the specific freedoms to run the program, share it with others, make modifications to the source code, and share modified versions of the source. With this freedom, a user can not only work with others to find and eliminate bugs, but they can find ways to adapt and improve the software so as to squeeze the most they can out of the device. The same can't be said with the 2011 adapters that shipped with this chipset.

      And, this isn't just idle speculation. Already we have seen a fair bit of cooperation between this firmwares lead developers and the ath9k module maintainers. I would be very surprised if the almost two-year old bug you pointed to still exists. But if it does, then at least I know you and I can easily reach out to a trustworthy community of free software hackers to explain to us the problem.

  2. Master Mode by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    one thing i noticed last week on ThinkPenguin is that their adapters generally support Master Mode making it easy to build access points. i don't think this can be said for most adapters requiring ndiswrapper.

    1. Re:Master Mode by adri · · Score: 5, Informative

      The wifi part of the hardware does. One of the reasons we opened up the firmware was to let people at it to make it better at supporting master mode.

      The NIC has a small embedded CPU to act as a PCIeUSB gateway and a small amount of RAM to run code and buffer frames. The problem with master mode is the amount of RAM that you need for each associated station. So there's been discussion about moving some of the stuff done in the NIC CPU (transmit aggregation, rate control) into the host, so the NIC itself doesn't need to store (that much|any) per-station state.

    2. Re:Master Mode by adri · · Score: 3, Informative

      Things then crash. :-)

      Embedded software looks different to your Linux/FreeBSD kernel development. There's fixed buffers allocated for things. Once those buffers are full, everything stops until they're not full.

      If you want more information please subscribe to the ath9k firmware list and ask questions there. I'd rather everyone benefit from the answers!

  3. Re:Why is it so very last-generation? by adri · · Score: 3, Informative

    The FSF decided to investigate this AR9271 part. I'm not sure why.

    The AR7010+AR9280 NICs are dual-band. There's AR7010+AR9283 NICs that are 2x2 2.4ghz only. The AR7010+AR9287 NICs are also 2x2 2.4GHz only but support a few newer things (like short-GI in 20MHz mode, and generally better behaviour all around.)

    Hopefully the FSF certifies the AR7010 based firmware devices too. But, they've chosen this one and I'm glad they saw it through.

    I don't know if there's a hardware list that shows the dual-band ath9k_htc hardware. But it's out there, somewhere.