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New manpage for the Wavelan (wl) driver.
Submitted by: Jim Binkley <jrb@cs.pdx.edu>
This commit is contained in:
Mike Smith
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svn path=/head/; revision=27814
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.\"
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.\" Copyright (c) 1996 Michael Smith
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.\" Copyright (c) 1997, Jim Binkley
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.\" All rights reserved.
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.\"
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.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
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@ -10,6 +10,11 @@
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.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
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.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
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.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
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.\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
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.\" must display the following acknowledgement:
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.\" This product includes software developed by Jim Binkley
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.\" 4. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products
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.\" derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
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.\"
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.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
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.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
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@ -23,122 +28,120 @@
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.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
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.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
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.\"
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.\" $Id$
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.\"
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.Dd March 4, 1997
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.Dt ED 4 i386
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.\" $Id$
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.Dd July 7, 1997
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.Dt WL 4 i386
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.Os FreeBSD
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.Sh NAME
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.Nm wl
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.Nd
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NCR Wavelan device driver
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.Nd T1 speed ISA/radio lan card
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.Sh SYNOPSIS
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.Cd "device wl0 at isa? port 0x300 net irq ? vector wlintr"
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.Cd "device wl0 at isa? port 0x300 net irq 5 vector wlintr"
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.Sh DESCRIPTION
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The
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.Nm
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driver provides support for the ISA bus AT&T/NCR/Lucent Wavelan
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ethernet-like wireless network cards.
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.Nm wl
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driver controls a radio lan card system made originally by
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NCR, then ATT, now Lucent. The system is spread-spectrum radio
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at around 915 mhz (or 2.4 ghz). With the supplied omni-directional antennae,
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about 400 feet (indoors, more outdoors) can be covered in circumference.
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This card can talk to the companion (wlp0) pccard. Speeds vary
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from 1 megabit to theoretically 2 megabits (roughly T1 in speed).
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.Pp
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All card configuration values except for the base address are read from the PSA
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(Parameter Storage Area) on the card, which can be configured with the
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.Xr wlconfig 8
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program. The base address for the card is set by dipswitches; see the manual
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supplied with the card for details.
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.Pp
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The
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.Nm
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driver does not accept any flags, however its behaviour can be controlled with
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a number of sysctl values:
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.Bl -hang -offset indent
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.It Em machdep.wl_xmit_delay
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On some systems, the driver is too fast for the Wavelan card. This value can be
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tweaked to slow the output rate of the driver at the expense of CPU performance.
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A value of 200 is believed to be acceptable for 486 systems, while 1000 is
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considered adequate for a 166MHz Pentium.
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.It Em machdep.wl_xmit_watch
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Causes extra debugging messages concerning the state of transmitted packets to
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be printed.
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.It Em machdep.wl_gather_snr
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SNR statistics are gathered. This is not completely implemented yet.
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.El
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.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
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The card has 3 fundmental hardware
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units, a so-called PSA or programmable storage area, a radio modem,
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and a ethernet lan controller. The latter component is the
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ancient (and not very honorable) Intel 82586 ethernet chip.
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Fundamentally it appears to the operating system as an ethernet system,
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and speaks IEEE MAC addresses. The radio modem simply translates
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ethernet packets to/from radio packets, that are either at 2.4 Ghz
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or 915 mhz depending on the radio modem. It supports a collision
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avoidance scheme. The lan controller
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supports promiscuous mode, broadcast, and multicasting
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(although there is a glitch
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in the latter). "It thinks it is ethernet".
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.Pp
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How it is used
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depends on the kind of antennae deployed with it. Point to point
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applications are possible as are ethernet-like lan use. The vendor
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ships an omni-directional antennae that works in the
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vicinity of 400 feet (indoors).
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Point to point antennae can be purchased that will go miles.
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.Sh SETUP
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The card can either be initialized with the vendor supplied DOS setup software.
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Typically minimally an IRQ, port, and Network ID must be supplied.
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Michael Smith's
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.Nm wlconfig(8)
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utility can now be used to do this work from
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the UNIX side. The card is "not" plug and play.
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The network id controls whether one set of cards can hear another.
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If different, cards will read physical packets, but they will be discarded
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by the radio modem.
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.Sh CONTROL
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In addition to the config utility, there are several sysctl
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switches that can be used to modify runtime parameters.
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The
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.Nm sysctl(8)
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variables are as follows:
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.Bl -diag
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.It "wl%d: PSA corrupt (invalid IRQ value)"
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The IRQ value in the PSA is illegal. The card will be configured not to generate
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any interrupts, ie. it will not work as a network device, however it will be possible
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to use
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.Xr wlconfig 8
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to reconfigure the IRQ to a sensible value.
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.It "wl%d init(): trouble resetting board."
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.It "wl%d bldcu(): iscp_busy timeout."
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.It "wl%d bldcu(): not ready after reset."
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The board failed to respond correctly during reset and configuration.
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.It "wl%d: busy?!"
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While attempting to queue a packet for transmission, the card claims to
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be busy although we were sure it wasn't.
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.It "wl%d read(): board is not running."
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An attempt was made to read a packet from the card, but we don't think that
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it's running. Should never happen.
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.It "wl%d read(): Invalid buffer"
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The i82586 on the card has corrupted its buffers.
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.It "wl%d read(): hwrst trouble."
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Having failed to meet expectations, the i82586 on the card is refusing to reset.
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.It "wl%d read(): No mbuf nth"
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An error occurred allocating mbufs to copy a received packet to.
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.It "wl%d ioctl(): board is not running"
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The interface was marked as DOWN but still RUNNING. Harmless.
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.It "wlack() int bits disappeared : %04x != int_type %04x"
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While acknowledging an interrupt, some of the interrupt sources on the i83586
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went away.
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.It "wl%d: xmt intr but not busy, CU %04x"
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A transmit interrupt occurred but we are not expecting one.
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.It "wl%d: xmt intr but ac_status == 0"
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A transmit interrupt occurred but there is no status to indicate that one should
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have been generated.
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.It "wl%d: xmt aborted"
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The transmission of a packet was aborted.
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.It "wl%d: no CTS"
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A packet was not transmitted because the CTS input to the i82586 went away.
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.It "wl%d: DMA underrun"
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The DMA hardware on the Wavelan card failed, causing an outgoing packet to be
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lost.
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.It "wl%d: xmt deferred"
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Transmission of a packet was deferred to avoid other traffic.
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.It "wl%d: heart beat"
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The i82586 thought it heard a heartbeat signal. This usually means that there's
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someone else transmitting at the same time.
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.It "wl%d: too many collisions"
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A packet was aborted because too many collisions occurred trying to send it.
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.It "wl%d RCV: !OK %x"
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A receive operation did not complete OK.
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.It "wl%d: slow accepting xmit"
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The i82586 on the card is taking a long time to accept a transmit command.
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.It "wl%d: i82586 Self Test failed!"
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Diagnostics on the i82586 failed.
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.It "wl%d: %s failed; status = %d, inw = %x, outw = %x"
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A command to the i82586 failed.
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.It "wl%d wlack(): board not accepting command."
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The card is not responding to an interrupt acknowledge.
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.It "machdep.wl_xmit_delay <useconds>"
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This variable will cause the driver to insert a delay on transmit.
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250 is the default. The delay should probably be a bit longer
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on faster cpus and less on slower cpus. It exists because the 82586
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was not designed to work with pentium-speed cpu systems and if overdriven
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will have copious xmit side errors.
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.It machdep.wl_ignore_nwid <0 | 1>
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This switch defaults to 0; i.e., the nwid is not ignored. It can
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be set to 1 to cause the nwid to not be used. This may be useful
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when the device is in promiscuous mode as one can watch for all
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packets and ignore nwid differences.
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.It machdep.wl_xmit_watch <milliseconds>
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This switch is not currently useful.
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.It machdep.wl_gather_snr <milliseconds>
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This switch is not currently useful.
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.Pp
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There is also a signal strength cache in the driver. It may be interrogated
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with
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.Nm wlconfig(8) .
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Incoming packets
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are checked for certain hardware radio-modem values including signal
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strength, silence, and quality, which range fro 0..63, 0..63, and 0..15
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respectively. Thus one can read out signal strenth values to see
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how close/far peer nodes are. The signal strength cache is indexed by
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sender MAC address.
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There are two sysctls that change how it filters packets. Both are on
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by default.
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.It machdep.wl_wlcache_mcastonly <0 | 1>
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By default this switch is on. It forces the cache to filter out
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unicast packets. Only broadcast or multicast packets are accepted.
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.It machdep.wl_wlcache_iponly <0 | 1>
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By default this switch is on. It forces the driver to discard non-IP
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packets and also stores the IP src address. ARP packets are ignored,
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as are any other network protocol barring IPv4 packets.
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.El
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.Sh CAVEATS
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The cards are known to lose transmit interrupts under heavy load. Ajust the
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machdep.wl_xmit_delay parameter to avoid this.
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.Pp
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On one test link, packet loss was significant enough to causes major lagging.
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.Sh BUGS
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The
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.Nm
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driver is very old and has been hacked on by many people. The i82586 is an
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odd and funky device. The two are not necessarily a good mix.
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The 82586 has numerous defects. It may experience transmit-side
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errors when modern faster cpus send packets at it faster than it can handle.
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The driver (and probably the chip) does not support an all multicast mode.
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As a result, it can be used with applications like mrouted(8), but
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it must go into promiscuous mode for that to work. The driver
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is slow to change modes from "normal" to promiscuous mode, presumably
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due to delays in the configuration code.
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.Sh SEE ALSO
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.Xr wlconfig 8 ,
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.Xr netintro 4 ,
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.Xr ifconfig 8
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.Xr sysctl 8 ,
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.Xr http://www.wavelan.com
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.Sh HISTORY
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The
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.Nm
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device driver was written/ported for Mach by Anders Klemets, ported to BSD/OS
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by Richard Morris, to FreeBSD 2.1 by Jim Binkley and to FreeBSD 2.2 by Michael
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Smith. It has not appeared in any FreeBSD releases yet.
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.Nm wl
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driver was written by Anders Klemets (thousands of years ago?) and
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appears to be based on an even older Intel 82586 driver. The 82586
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controller was one of the first (if not the first?) integrated lan
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controller on the block. That does not mean it was the best either.
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Anders ported and or created a driver for the ISA wavelan and PCCARD
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wavelan system too (wlp). Robert T. Morris, Jr. ported the Mach
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drivers to BSDI. Jim Binkley ported them to FreeBSD 2.1. Michael
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Smith ported the wl driver only to 2.2.2. Jim and Michael have been
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maintaining them. The current state of the driver is NOT ANYONE'S
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FAULT. Thanks to Bernie Doehner and Robert Buaas for contributions.
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.Sh AUTHOR
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Too numerous to mention. See above.
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