NAME

rtw —Realtek RTL8180L IEEE 802.11b wireless network device

SYNOPSIS

rtw* at cardbus?
rtw* at pci?

DESCRIPTION

Thertw driver supports PCI/CardBus 802.11b wireless adapters based on the Realtek RTL8180L.

A variety of radio transceivers can be found in these devices, including the Philips SA2400A, Maxim MAX2820, and GCT GRF5101.

These are the modes thertw driver can operate in:

BSS mode

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

IBSS mode

Also known asIEEE ad-hoc mode orpeer-to-peer mode. This is the standardized method of operating without an access point. Stations associate with a service set. However, actual connections between stations are peer-to-peer.

Host AP

In this mode the driver acts as an access point (base station) for other cards.

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.

Thertw driver can be configured to use software Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). It is strongly recommended that WEP not be used as the sole mechanism to secure wireless communication, due to serious weaknesses in it.

Thertw driver can be configured at runtime withifconfig(8) or on boot withhostname.if(5).

HARDWARE

The following adapters should work:

EXAMPLES

The following example scans for available networks:

The followinghostname.if(5) example configures rtw0 to join network “mynwid”, using WEP key “mywepkey”, obtaining an IP address using DHCP:

nwid mynwid nwkey mywepkeyinet autoconf

The followinghostname.if(5) example creates a host-based access point on boot:

mediaopt hostapnwid mynwid nwkey mywepkeyinet 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0

SEE ALSO

arp(4),cardbus(4),ifmedia(4),intro(4),netintro(4),pci(4),hostname.if(5),hostapd(8),ifconfig(8)

Realtek,https://www.realtek.com/en.

HISTORY

Thertw device driver first appeared inOpenBSD 3.7.

AUTHORS

Thertw driver was written byDavid Young <dyoung@NetBSD.org> and ported toOpenBSD byJonathan Gray <jsg@openbsd.org>.

CAVEATS

GCT refuse to release any documentation on their GRF5101 RF transceiver.

While PCI devices will attach, most of them are not able to transmit.

Host AP mode doesn't support power saving. Clients attempting to use power saving mode may experience significant packet loss (disabling power saving on the client will fix this).