802.11g And Wpa?

[speculatrix]

has anyone gotten an 802.11g card to work, and with WPA?

snag is at work they only want to run 11g and WPA (Apple airport extreme) on their wireless lan for security; there's only a vague chance they would drop it down to 802.11b (if the Senior Sysadmin decides to get an iPaq with wlan)... but will definitely stick with WPA.

I would get murdered if I put up my own access point (and rightly so!), so I'd have to use bluetooth, which is OK for surfing but not for file transfer.

I would be happy to choose ANY rom, and I have quite a lot of experience with linux and 802.11~ from hacking together an access point with the Keith Smith OpenSTA/OpenAP stuff on a eumitcom single board computer, so am not afraid of getting my hands dirty!

thanks for any thoughts
Paul

[stupkid]

has anyone gotten an 802.11g card to work, and with WPA?

snag is at work they only want to run 11g and WPA (Apple airport extreme) on their wireless lan for security; there's only a vague chance they would drop it down to 802.11b (if the Senior Sysadmin decides to get an iPaq with wlan)... but will definitely stick with WPA.

I would get murdered if I put up my own access point (and rightly so!), so I'd have to use bluetooth, which is OK for surfing but not for file transfer.

I would be happy to choose ANY rom, and I have quite a lot of experience with linux and 802.11~ from hacking together an access point with the Keith Smith OpenSTA/OpenAP stuff on a eumitcom single board computer, so am not afraid of getting my hands dirty!

thanks for any thoughts
Paul
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WPA is working on Cacko, but it would really help if you let us know what model of Zaurus you are using.

[speculatrix]

has anyone gotten an 802.11g card to work, and with WPA?
thanks for any thoughts
Paul
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WPA is working on Cacko, but it would really help if you let us know what model of Zaurus you are using.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=69033\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

for the 860, but I'd be curious to know if a CF 802.11g could work on SL-C3000 as well (just in case I suddenly get rich)  

[speculatrix]

on the subject of 802.11g:

Am I right in thinking there's only one 802.11g card in CF form at the moment, the LinkSys WCF54, and it doesn't work at all in the Zaurus?

I don't have a wlan card at all yet, and want to try and future-proof myself. I would be happy to buy a card which isn't 100% supported (say if it only worked in 802.11b mode just for now), in which case if the Linksys 11g card partly works I'd buy that.

My priority is
1st - 11g future compatibility
2nd - WPA

thanks
Paul

[AndyTiedye]

on the subject of 802.11g:

Am I right in thinking there's only one 802.11g card in CF form at the moment, the LinkSys WCF54, and it doesn't work at all in the Zaurus?

It's the only one I've seen.   I have one and it doesn't work in the SL-C3000.
I have about 3 more weeks to return it for a refund.  There is an open-source
driver for that chipset at http://www.agere.com/mobility/wireless_lan_drivers.html
I just downloaded it and will take a look.

I don't have a wlan card at all yet, and want to try and future-proof myself. I would be happy to buy a card which isn't 100% supported (say if it only worked in 802.11b mode just for now), in which case if the Linksys 11g card partly works I'd buy that.

My priority is
1st - 11g future compatibility
2nd - WPA

thanks
Paul
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802.11g networks will generally work in 802.11b as well, so 802.11b cards are
likely to be usable for some time to come.  And the necessary drivers are probably
already on your machine.  The Linksys WCF54g uses an Agere chipset, so the existing
drivers don't know how to talk to it at all.

I got an Ambicom 802.11b card (prism2 chipset) and it works fine open or using WEP.
Unfortunately WEP is so insecure I don't even want to run it at home.
 
We need WPA.

I'm told that the wpa supplicant works with prism2-based cards, so it should just
be a matter of compiling it for the Zaurus.   Has anybody done that?

[kingmob]

We need WPA.

I'm told that the wpa supplicant works with prism2-based cards, so it should just
be a matter of compiling it for the Zaurus.   Has anybody done that?

It's in the pdaxrom unstable feed.

There's no support for the madwifi driver (it wouldn't compile and I didn't spend any time trying to fix it, as I don't have an atheros card), but it works fine on my noname prism2 card.

Tim

[speculatrix]

Problem with WEP is you have to change the keys quite regularly, or face having it cracked. I share my ADSL with a neighbour, and change the key monthly, even though they are very low traffic. The access point is on a separate network, v heavily firewalled off from my lan in the house, and can only be used to surf the net or collect pop3 email.

Problem with making an access point dual b + g is that when a b client connects, the whole wlan slows down to b mode. So, this is why at work they run only g mode with WPA, and hence my desire to run 11g+WPA.

So at work I am currently using bluetooth with my SuSE linux desktop acting as a gateway (using PAND and not ppp over rfcomm). I haven't bought an 802.11 card yet, whilst consulting the learned body that is OESF!

Thanks very much for all the replies, very enlightening. I've been a linux user on servers for years, on desktop for three years, been following Zaurus product forever but only took the plunge a few weeks ago to buy an SL-C860 and so far am very impressed with the robustness and richness of the networking and all the apps.

Paul

[speculatrix]

There's no support for the madwifi driver (it wouldn't compile and I didn't spend any time trying to fix it, as I don't have an atheros card), but it works fine on my noname prism2 card.

is there an atheros CF form 11g card? I see they do miniPCI cards, so if nothing else they're surely planning a CF 11g card?

[speculatrix]

I got an Ambicom 802.11b card (prism2 chipset) and it works fine open or using WEP.
Unfortunately WEP is so insecure I don't even want to run it at home.
 
We need WPA.

I'm told that the wpa supplicant works with prism2-based cards, so it should just
be a matter of compiling it for the Zaurus.   Has anybody done that?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=71064\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I just bought a CF wlan card cheap off ebay, I thought it was going to be a Senao, but it turned out to be a (mercury) zonet zcf1100 card. Works fine for kismet, but now I need the WPA supplicant too; I won't run plain WEP for anything important either!

[speculatrix]

FORKED THIS THREAD OFF TO HERE, about building a cacko WPA supplicant:

https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=11487

d'oh! having delved deeper, I find that cacko has got the command-line tools for wpa (wpa_supplicant, wpa_cli etc)...

see later post for details

[speculatrix]

I decided to ask Linksys if they would provide a linux/opensource driver for their card. Here is what they answered:

Customer   04/08/2005 04:07 PM
Hi,
I would like to use the compact flash 802.11g on linux - 802.11b cards are unsuitable as my employer runs in g-mode only. Aare there any plans to provide any linux support for this card at all?

thanks
Paul

Response (xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)   04/08/2005 08:36 PM
Dear Paul,

Thank you for contacting Linksys Customer Support.

I apologize but we do not have any information about your inquiry at this moment. All our adapters are designed for Windows only to work. You may ask Linux support what they could recommend you to use. However, you may visit our website anytime to keep you posted.

Thank you.

If none of them works please feel free to email us again or you may call our technical support toll free hotline (800)-326-7114 open 24x7 so that we could further assist you. Please use this phone number given if you have further questions and as reference for future support calls.

[I snipped a few things from the reply, including their standard "not to be published" disclaimer]

Paul

[speculatrix]

cacko has got the command-line tools for wpa (wpa_supplicant, wpa_cli etc)...

you have to amend the /etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.opts file and add WPA=y to the "qpewlan0" section which matches the ESSID you are trying to connect to.

then, save a backup copy of /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, then edit it and trim out all the junk except the config part you want to use.

when you trigger wlan connection, it starts up wpa_supplicant with the appropriate arguments and in theory WPA is configured per the conf file and it should work!

I tried this at work with an Apple airport extreme and it doesn't work (someone running windows didn't make it work either, only people with Apple powerbooks can). I've tried starting wpa_supplicant manually (-w makes it wait till the interface appears) to get a log:
   wpa_supplicant -d -dd -w -ieth0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -D hostap > /var/log 2>&1

and whilst impressively long, the log doesn't tell me why it fails.

sigh.

[azalin]

Are there any updates on rom support for 802.11g cards? I saw the following page after some searching:
http://prism54.org/
In which it is said that the prism54 chipsets are supported in a linux driver
( came on that page after an outdated link on http://www.fuw.edu.pl/~pliszka/hints/wireless.html )
maybe this knowledge can be merged with one of the roms  Or is this chipset in no way related to the one on the CF cards? (saw they were put on USB or "cardbus", haven't found a CF card with those chips on them but I may not have looked good enough). There is a nice wiki with docs here:
http://prism54.org/phpwiki/
I also want to hold off purchasing a wlan card for my C1000 since I don't want to drop any access points to the slower a/b modes for other people which are connected.

edit: Hmm when looking a bit more I found the Linksys WCF54G card has Linux driver sources at
http://www.agere.com/mobility/wireless_lan_drivers.html
( I found this on http://www.linuxdevices.com/cgi-bin/board/...Page=0&Session=  ) This adapter is CF but does not support the 802.11a 5 GHz band and only the 2.4 GHz band networks, no problem though since most access points are b/g). I hope this is useful info (haven't been able to look through those sources yet) so some of the roms may offer support for such cards

[maslovsky]

edit: Hmm when looking a bit more I found the Linksys WCF54G card has Linux driver sources at
http://www.agere.com/mobility/wireless_lan_drivers.html

There ate two versions of the driver - 7.18 release and 7.22 beta. The 7.18 is workng and will be included in Cacko 1.23. The 7.22 crashes the kernel...

Don't know which version supports your card, but if it's 7.18, then you're lucky

[azalin]

edit: Hmm when looking a bit more I found the Linksys WCF54G card has Linux driver sources at
http://www.agere.com/mobility/wireless_lan_drivers.html

There ate two versions of the driver - 7.18 release and 7.22 beta. The 7.18 is workng and will be included in Cacko 1.23. The 7.22 crashes the kernel...

Don't know which version supports your card, but if it's 7.18, then you're lucky
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Wow nice! Thanks for the news! I haven't bought any card yet, but if it works with that one I probably will  (and flash to Cacko!)

EDIT: Hmm after some searching I wonder if that card has the Hermes II.5 chip (WL60040) (I think the Hermes II is WL60010), for which the 7.22 drivers may be necessary  Not entirely sure though.

I was a bit confused with all the different chipset models so I looked around and found this page which explains it nicely: [a href=\"http://www.topfx.com/wifi.shtml]http://www.topfx.com/wifi.shtml[/url]
Stumbled on some other interesting pages as well:
http://questier.com/howto.html
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/
http://www.handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/Ipa...y_2fWirelessLAN

Another note is that it seems some of these Agere drivers are meant for kernel 2.4 not for 2.6 (most Z roms are based on 2.4 right? So this would be no problem then).