Host AP for Prism 54

[Denis Vlasenko]

On Wednesday 28 July 2004 04:54, Simon French wrote:
> Hi Chris,
>
> I did read that document before posting and I know that only Prism 2-3 is
> supported. I was just kind of wondering why. Has anyone tried to extend the
> driver to support 802.11g cards before? Isn't anyone interested in working
> on it? I just think it sucks that 802.11g is supposed to be the next step
> in evolution over 802.11b. But in order to use it, we have to give up our

Because Prism 11g hardware is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike 11b
one. It makes no sense to mutate hostap into 11g driver.

> right to change the code and go back to using proprietary firmware. Then we
> are at the mercy of the manufacturers again (and Connexant isn't exactly
> the most Linux-friendly company out there).

hostap-compatible cards need firmware too.

Your observation about Conexant is correct.

> Chris Evans <cwevans at acm.org> wrote:
> you mention prism54.org which is for g based cards.

Exactly. Use it.

> FAQ #8 has...
>
> 8. Does Host AP driver support IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g? Does it support
> chipsets other than Prism 2/2.5/3?
>
> Host AP driver supports only Intersil Prism chipsets, versions 2, 2.5,
> and 3. Those chipsets support IEEE 802.11b only; other chipsets are
> not supported. All utilities distributed with Host AP driver except
> wpa_supplicant work only with Host AP driver, so they are limited to
> the same hardware. wpa_supplicant works with other drivers, including
> those that support 802.11a and 802.11g.
--
vda