rtwn (4)

Leading comments

$OpenBSD: rtwn.4,v 1.2 2015/07/09 11:28:53 stsp Exp $

Copyright (c) 2010 Damien Bergamini <damien.bergamini@free.fr>
Copyright (c) 2015 Stefan Sperling <stsp@openbsd.org>

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL ...

(The comments found at the beginning of the groff file "man4/rtwn.4freebsd".)

NAME

rtwn - Realtek RTL8188CE PCIe IEEE 802.11b/g/n wireless network device

SYNOPSIS

To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

device rtwn device rtwnfw device wlan device firmware

Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf5:

if_rtwn_load="YES"

After you have read the license in /usr/share/doc/legal/realtek.LICENSE you will want to add the following lines to loader.conf5:

legal.realtek.license_ack=1
rtwn-rtl8192cfwU_load="YES"
rtwn-rtl8192cfwU_B_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

The driver supports PCIe wireless network devices based on the Realtek RTL8188CE chipset.

The RTL8188CE is a highly integrated 802.11n adapter that combines a MAC, a 1T1R capable baseband and an RF in a single chip. It operates in the 2GHz spectrum only.

These are the modes the driver can operate in:

BSS mode

Also known as infrastructure mode, this is used when associating with an access point, through which all traffic passes. This mode is the default.

monitor mode

In this mode the driver is able to receive packets without associating with an access point. This disables the internal receive filter and enables the card to capture packets from networks which it wouldn't normally have access to, or to scan for access points.

The driver can be configured to use Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK). WPA is the current encryption standard for wireless networks. It is strongly recommended that WEP not be used as the sole mechanism to secure wireless communication, due to serious weaknesses in it.

The driver can be configured at runtime with ifconfig(8).

FILES

The driver needs at least version 1.0 of the following firmware files, which are loaded when an interface is brought up:

/boot/kernel/rtwn-rtl8192cfwU.ko

/boot/kernel/rtwn-rtl8192cfwU_B.ko

EXAMPLES

Join an existing BSS network (i.e., connect to an access point):

ifconfig wlan create wlandev rtwn0 inet 192.168.0.20 \
    netmask 0xffffff00

Join a specific BSS network with network name ``my_net ''

"ifconfig wlan create wlandev rtwn0 ssid my_net up"

Join a specific BSS network with 64-bit WEP encryption:

ifconfig wlan create wlandev rtwn0 ssid my_net \
        wepmode on wepkey 0x1234567890 weptxkey 1 up

DIAGNOSTICS

"could not read firmware %s"

For some reason, the driver was unable to read the microcode file from the filesystem. The file might be missing or corrupted.

"device timeout"

A frame dispatched to the hardware for transmission did not complete in time. The driver will reset the hardware. This should not happen.

SEE ALSO

pci(4), rtwnfw(4), wlan(4), wlan_ccmp4, wlan_tkip4, wlan_wep4, ifconfig(8), wpa_supplicant8

HISTORY

The driver first appeared in Ox 5.8 .

AUTHORS

The driver was written by An -nosplit An Stefan Sperling Aq Mt stsp@openbsd.org and ported by An Kevin Lo Aq Mt kevlo@freebsd.org . It was based on the urtwn(4) driver written by An Damien Bergamini Aq Mt damien.bergamini@free.fr .

CAVEATS

The driver does not support any of the 802.11n capabilities offered by the adapters. Additional work is required in ieee80211(9) before those features can be supported.