Which WLAN cards work with hostapd and wpa_supplicant

[Pavel Roskin]

On Thu, 2007-03-22 at 12:52 +0100, Urs Thuermann wrote:
> I'd like to get an overview about a couple of WLAN chips/drivers and
> how they work with hostapd and wpa_supplicant.  The following is a
> summary of what I found on this ML and the web page:
> 
> * Atheros/Madwifi
> 
>   Works with both, hostapd and wpa_supplicant (-Dmadwifi)

And wpa_supplicant should work with -Dwext as well.

> * Prism54
> 
>   Works with hostapd.
> 
>   I haven't found info on wpa_supplicant.  Does it work with
>   wpa_supplicant with -Dwext?

I think prism54 support is not quite good yet.  I would not rely on it.

> * bcm43xx  (in 2.6.17, based on SoftMAC)
> 
>   It seems on the ML, people are using this with hostapd, although on
>   http://hostap.epitest.fi/ Broadcom is not listed.

I think the proprietary driver was meant, not bcm43xx.

>   Works with wpa_supplicant with -Dwext.
> 
> * Intel 3945 with ipw3945
> 
>   I haven't found anything about hostapd with this chip.
>
>   Works with wpa_supplicant with -Dwext.

It's going to be obsoleted by iwlwifi, a free driver using mac80211
layer (DeviceScape).  However, the AP mode is not supported in iwlwifi
yet.

> Is the above summary correct and can someone fill the holes, i.e.
> prism54/wpa_supplicant, bcm43xx/hostapd, and ipw3945/hostapd?

Negative for all three.

> How will this situation change when the Dscape stack gets into the
> kernel (2.6.22 or 2.6.23)?  The bcm43xx driver has already been ported
> to Dscape and the new 3945 driver from Intel, which does not need the
> proprietary user space daemon, is also based on Dscape.  Does the
> Dscape stack also support WE with WPA/WPA2 extensions?  Or will
> hostapd and wpa_supplicant be changed to work with Dscape?

hostapd will be changed, that's for sure.

mac80211 supports wext well enough for wpa_supplicant to work, but we
could see natice support for cfg80211 as well.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin