| 1 | .\" |
| 2 | .\" Copyright (c) 1997, Jim Binkley |
| 3 | .\" All rights reserved. |
| 4 | .\" |
| 5 | .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without |
| 6 | .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions |
| 7 | .\" are met: |
| 8 | .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright |
| 9 | .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. |
| 10 | .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright |
| 11 | .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the |
| 12 | .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. |
| 13 | .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software |
| 14 | .\" must display the following acknowledgement: |
| 15 | .\" This product includes software developed by Jim Binkley |
| 16 | .\" 4. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products |
| 17 | .\" derived from this software without specific prior written permission. |
| 18 | .\" |
| 19 | .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND |
| 20 | .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE |
| 21 | .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE |
| 22 | .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE |
| 23 | .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL |
| 24 | .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS |
| 25 | .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) |
| 26 | .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT |
| 27 | .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY |
| 28 | .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF |
| 29 | .\" SUCH DAMAGE. |
| 30 | .\" |
| 31 | .\" $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man4/man4.i386/wl.4,v 1.10.2.5 2002/03/19 18:24:15 schweikh Exp $ |
| 32 | .\" $DragonFly: src/share/man/man4/man4.i386/wl.4,v 1.5 2008/04/15 19:19:49 swildner Exp $ |
| 33 | .Dd July 7, 1997 |
| 34 | .Dt WL 4 i386 |
| 35 | .Os |
| 36 | .Sh NAME |
| 37 | .Nm wl |
| 38 | .Nd T1 speed ISA/radio lan card |
| 39 | .Sh SYNOPSIS |
| 40 | .Cd "device wl0 at isa? port 0x300 irq 5" |
| 41 | .Sh DESCRIPTION |
| 42 | The |
| 43 | .Nm |
| 44 | driver controls a radio lan card system made originally by |
| 45 | NCR, then ATT, now Lucent. The system is spread-spectrum radio |
| 46 | at around 915 MHz (or 2.4 GHz). With the supplied omni-directional antennae, |
| 47 | about 400 feet (indoors, more outdoors) can be covered in circumference. |
| 48 | This card can talk to the companion (wlp0) pccard. Speeds vary |
| 49 | from 1 megabit to theoretically 2 megabits (roughly T1 in speed). |
| 50 | .Pp |
| 51 | The card has three fundamental hardware |
| 52 | units, a so-called PSA or programmable storage area, a radio modem, |
| 53 | and an ethernet lan controller. The latter component is the |
| 54 | ancient (and not very honorable) Intel 82586 ethernet chip. |
| 55 | Fundamentally it appears to the operating system as an ethernet system, |
| 56 | and speaks IEEE MAC addresses. The radio modem simply translates |
| 57 | ethernet packets to/from radio packets, that are either at 2.4 GHz |
| 58 | or 915 MHz depending on the radio modem. It supports a collision |
| 59 | avoidance scheme. The lan controller |
| 60 | supports promiscuous mode, broadcast, and multicasting |
| 61 | (although there is a glitch |
| 62 | in the latter). "It thinks it is ethernet". |
| 63 | .Pp |
| 64 | How it is used |
| 65 | depends on the kind of antennae deployed with it. Point to point |
| 66 | applications are possible as are ethernet-like lan use. The vendor |
| 67 | ships an omni-directional antennae that works in the |
| 68 | vicinity of 400 feet (indoors). |
| 69 | Point to point antennae can be purchased that will go miles. |
| 70 | .Sh SETUP |
| 71 | The card can either be initialized with the vendor supplied DOS setup software. |
| 72 | Typically minimally an IRQ, port, and Network ID must be supplied. |
| 73 | Michael Smith's |
| 74 | .Xr wlconfig 8 |
| 75 | utility can now be used to do this work from the |
| 76 | .Ux |
| 77 | side. The card is "not" plug and play. |
| 78 | The network id controls whether one set of cards can hear another. |
| 79 | If different, cards will read physical packets, but they will be discarded |
| 80 | by the radio modem. |
| 81 | .Sh CONTROL |
| 82 | In addition to the config utility, there are several sysctl |
| 83 | switches that can be used to modify runtime parameters. |
| 84 | The |
| 85 | .Xr sysctl 8 |
| 86 | variables are as follows: |
| 87 | .Bl -diag |
| 88 | .It "machdep.wl_xmit_delay <useconds>" |
| 89 | This variable will cause the driver to insert a delay on transmit. |
| 90 | 250 is the default. The delay should probably be a bit longer |
| 91 | on faster cpus and less on slower cpus. It exists because the 82586 |
| 92 | was not designed to work with pentium-speed cpu systems and if overdriven |
| 93 | will have copious xmit side errors. |
| 94 | .It machdep.wl_ignore_nwid <0 | 1> |
| 95 | This switch defaults to 0; i.e., the nwid is not ignored. It can |
| 96 | be set to 1 to cause the nwid to not be used. This may be useful |
| 97 | when the device is in promiscuous mode as one can watch for all |
| 98 | packets and ignore nwid differences. |
| 99 | .It machdep.wl_xmit_watch <milliseconds> |
| 100 | This switch is not currently useful. |
| 101 | .It machdep.wl_gather_snr <milliseconds> |
| 102 | This switch is not currently useful. |
| 103 | .Pp |
| 104 | There is also a signal strength cache in the driver. It may be interrogated |
| 105 | with |
| 106 | .Xr wlconfig 8 . |
| 107 | Incoming packets |
| 108 | are checked for certain hardware radio-modem values including signal |
| 109 | strength, silence, and quality, which range fro 0..63, 0..63, and 0..15 |
| 110 | respectively. Thus one can read out signal strenth values to see |
| 111 | how close/far peer nodes are. The signal strength cache is indexed by |
| 112 | sender MAC address. |
| 113 | There are two sysctls that change how it filters packets. Both are on |
| 114 | by default. |
| 115 | .It machdep.wl_wlcache_mcastonly <0 | 1> |
| 116 | By default this switch is on. |
| 117 | It forces the cache to filter out |
| 118 | unicast packets. Only broadcast or multicast packets are accepted. |
| 119 | .It machdep.wl_wlcache_iponly <0 | 1> |
| 120 | By default this switch is on. It forces the driver to discard non-IP |
| 121 | packets and also stores the IP src address. ARP packets are ignored, |
| 122 | as are any other network protocol barring IPv4 packets. |
| 123 | .El |
| 124 | .Sh CAVEATS |
| 125 | The 82586 has numerous defects. It may experience transmit-side |
| 126 | errors when modern faster cpus send packets at it faster than it can handle. |
| 127 | The driver (and probably the chip) does not support an all multicast mode. |
| 128 | As a result, it can be used with applications like |
| 129 | .Xr mrouted 8 , |
| 130 | but it must go into promiscuous mode for that to work. The driver |
| 131 | is slow to change modes from "normal" to promiscuous mode, presumably |
| 132 | due to delays in the configuration code. |
| 133 | .Sh SEE ALSO |
| 134 | .Xr sysctl 8 , |
| 135 | .Xr wlconfig 8 |
| 136 | .Pp |
| 137 | .Pa http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.wavelan.com |
| 138 | .Sh HISTORY |
| 139 | The |
| 140 | .Nm |
| 141 | driver was written by |
| 142 | .An Anders Klemets |
| 143 | (thousands of years ago?) and |
| 144 | appears to be based on an even older Intel 82586 driver. The 82586 |
| 145 | controller was one of the first (if not the first?) integrated lan |
| 146 | controller on the block. That does not mean it was the best either. |
| 147 | Anders ported and or created a driver for the ISA wavelan and PCCARD |
| 148 | wavelan system too (wlp). |
| 149 | .An Robert T. Morris, Jr. |
| 150 | ported the Mach drivers to BSDI. |
| 151 | .An Jim Binkley |
| 152 | ported them to |
| 153 | .Fx 2.1 . |
| 154 | .An Michael Smith |
| 155 | ported the wl driver only to 2.2.2. Jim and Michael have been |
| 156 | maintaining them. The current state of the driver is NOT ANYONE'S |
| 157 | FAULT. Thanks to |
| 158 | .An Bernie Doehner |
| 159 | and |
| 160 | .An Robert Buaas |
| 161 | for contributions. |
| 162 | .Sh AUTHORS |
| 163 | Too numerous to mention. See above. |