I'm trying to start grouping information about Linux 802.11n support. Work is underway on integrating 802.11n support onto mac80211 now thanks to Intel's efforts. Besides that we will still then need specific driver support. Unfortunately most hardware requires reverse engineering efforts at the moment. In review it seems our best options for support for Linux so far seems to be Intel and Ralink as the vendor has provided support. Kudos to them!!! Let me review some options we have, I'll post this on the wiki after recompiling some more information. If you can help fill in the gaps that'd be greatly appreciated. --------------------- Requires reverse engineering efforts: * Atheros I believe we can get the card at least to work in compatibility mode with a bit of effort in ath5k. Nick told he had some EEPROM info but the baseband MAC is completely different and I think the radios are too. The 802.11n specific stuff will be a challenge though as we'd need to figure out how to enable 802.11n on MadWifi first. Support for 802.11n with MadWifi may come in the future. It seems the HAL already may have support for it. MadWifi's net80211 stack doesn't seem to yet have High Throughput support but FreeBSD's net80211 stack does seem to have it though. It may be worth to just try to move cook up a new driver to use the HAL with mac80211 now that we know what the HAL may be doing more. Whatever will help us reverse engineer more. I have a PCI AR5416 and will poke at it. Hardware can be readily found - D-Link DWA-552 worked for us. This is a PCI card. Not sure what other form factors this comes in. * Broadcom - not sure how common this hardware is, not sure what form factors these come in, and not sure what the driver progress is. * Airgo Driver: http://git.sipsolutions.net/agnx.git Specs: http://airgo.wdwconsulting.net/mymoin Devices: Beklin F5d8010, Netgear wgm511, wgm124, linksys wrt54gx, Netgear Wpnt511 agnx driver can TX/RX for AGN100 devices for PCI devices. Cardbus card not working for some reason. We'll try to help with this driver. Cardbus card: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=251852 You can pull out AGN100 MiniPCI cards from these APs: http://www.google.com/products?q=linksys+WRT54GX&btnG=Search+Products http://www.google.com/products?q=BELKIN+F5d8230&btnG=Search+Products If you want to try to add AGN300 support you can try getting this AP and pulling its card out: http://www.google.com/products?q=WPNT511&btnG=Search&show=dd ------------------ Vendor supported drivers: Intel: iwl4965 - Kudos to Intel for their support!!! Work is on the way to integrate proper 802.11n work with mac80211. This is perhaps our best supported device. I am only aware of PCI-express cards and PCI Express Half Mini Card form factor. I don't think there are any miniPCI cards out there. * Ralink I'd like to give Ralink kudos for their support for Linux. Thank you Ralink!!! They have provided a vendor GPL driver which needs to get ported to mac80211. This driver now needs to be ported to mac80211 but rt2x00 guys have been busy on focusing more on the stability of current rt2x00 drivers. The driver effort could use some help. It should be integrated with the rest of the rt2x00 driver effort if possible. MiniPCI cards are mostly only found on the laptops already shipped. You can also try to get some through Martin's minipci.biz. Other form factors I think exist are Cardbus and PCI. Not too sure what other form factors are available. Other possible devices Ralink devices which may work with this driver (not confirmed): http://www.greennet.ca/shop/product_info.php?ref=3¤cy=USD&products_id=15517 Vendor driver: http://www.ralinktech.com.tw/data/drivers/2007_0821_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.3.0.0.tgz Ralink 802.11n (RT2770F) also is shipped with the cool Asus motherboard that has Splashtop: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=869&num=5 ------------- Not too sure what's up with these vendors. Anyone have any information? * Realtek I can't find anything. * Marvel All I have found is that they do have 802.11n solutions (TopDog): http://www.marvell.com/products/wireless/topdog.jsp * Conexant: The best I can find is that they are "developing 802.11n solutions for high-performance, embedded applications": http://www.conexant.com/products/entry.jsp?id=30 and "Conexant tells Light Reading it integrated Atheros's 802.11n technology into its own VDSL2-gateway chips four months ago. It's just that Conexant never formally announced this." http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=130123 If any of you have further information about other vendors or any of the above please provide some details. Luis - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
