Which WLAN cards work with hostapd and wpa_supplicant

[Dan Williams]

On Thu, 2007-03-22 at 14:04 -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> 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.

It works with unencrypted & WEP with wpa_supplicant as long as you're
using the latest 2.6.19 stable and later.  It does still have the HOSTAP
ioctls.  I tried to add WE-19 support but that may or may not work.

Dan

> 
> > * 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.
>