HostAP and WPA2 with Intersil Prism card

[Jar]

Alex Pounds wrote:
> My question is simple: Can I use hostAP to do the WPA2 part in software, and
> thus use my laptop with my home network? If so, how? I've been told
> conflicting things about wpa_supplicant (story 1: It needs hardware support.

Yes. Prism2/2.5/3 station firmware needs to be 1.7.0 or newer. 1.7.4 is 
a good candidate. It is quite trivial to update the firmware if needed. 
See http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/

> Story 2: Hardware support is not neccessary, it needs driver support) and on
> the whole I am hugely confused. If someone can let me know if this is
> possible and point me to some simple documentation on how to set it up, I'd
> be most grateful.

Support is needed from all levels: Hardware-->Sta fw:1.7.0-->, 
driver-->hostap-driver and supplicant-->wpa_supplicant.

-- 
Best Regards, Jar