On Mon, 2004-05-10 at 22:04, Jonn Martell wrote: > On a related not, has anyone found a good 802.11g Linux compatible WLAN > NIC? It's amazing that vendors are making it this difficult!
Actually, a lot of the blame falls on the FCC. Open source drivers cannot be easily produced for many of these cards for legal reasons. Many of these cards (such as Atheros based cards) have the ability to control items such as regulatory domain (and hence available channels) and transmit power through software. The FCC, however, says that the users of these devices should not be allowed to operate them outside of FCC limits. As such, a lot of the hardware interface remains closed as a legal requirement. Take a look at the madwifi driver port to Linux. It's a driver for Atheros-based cards. This was originally a FreeBSD project, but it was ported to linux as well. It contains a binary-only HAL for interfacing with the card. It's pretty much the only way to legally release a driver for any open source OS. http://www.mattfoster.clara.co.uk/madwifi-faq.htm -- --Mike ----------------------------------- Michael Griego Wireless LAN Project Manager The University of Texas at Dallas ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/cg/.
