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AWI(4)			     Kernel Interfaces Manual			  AWI(4)

NAME
     awi -- AMD PCnetMobile IEEE 802.11 PCMCIA wireless network driver

SYNOPSIS
     device awi

DESCRIPTION
     The  awi  driver  supports various IEEE 802.11 wireless cards which run AMD
     PCnetMobile firmware based on AMD 79c930 controller with Intersil (formerly
     Harris) PRISM radio chipset.  It provides access to 32kb of  memory  shared
     between  the  controller  and the host.  All host/device interaction is via
     this shared memory, which can be accessed either via PCMCIA memory space or
     I/O space.  The awi driver encapsulates all IP and ARP  traffic  as  802.11
     frames.

     The driver works both in infrastructure mode and in adhoc (independent BSS)
     mode.

     In  infrastructure  mode, it communicates with an Access Point which serves
     as a link-layer bridge between an Ethernet and the  wireless  network.   An
     access point also provides roaming capability which allows wireless node to
     move between access points.

     In  adhoc	mode, it communicates peer to peer.  Though it is more efficient
     to communicate between wireless nodes, the coverage  is  limited  spatially
     due to lack of roaming capability.

     In  addition to these two mode in IEEE 802.11 specification, the awi driver
     also supports a variant of adhoc mode out of spec for DS radio cards, which
     makes possible to communicate with adhoc mode of wi(8)  driver.   The  NWID
     doesn't affect in this mode.

     For  more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8) and ifme-
     dia(4).

HARDWARE
     Cards supported by the awi driver include:

	   BayStack 650   1Mbps Frequency Hopping PCCARD adapter

	   BayStack 660   2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter

	   Icom SL-200	  2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter

	   Melco WLI-PCM  2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter

	   NEL SSMagic	  2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter

	   Netwave AirSurfer Plus
			  1Mbps Frequency Hopping PCCARD adapter

	   Netwave AirSurfer Pro
			  2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter

     The original Xircom Netwave AirSurfer is supported by the cnw(4) driver.

MEDIA SELECTION
     The DS cards support DS1 and DS2 media types, while the  FH  cards  support
     FH1  media  type.	For each media type, adhoc mediaopt can be used to indi-
     cate the driver to operate in adhoc mode.	For DS radio cards,  adhoc,flag0
     mediaopt can be used for wi(4) compatible adhoc mode.

DIAGNOSTICS
     awi0:  unable  to allocate memory space; using i/o only  Indicates that the
     driver was not able to allocate 32kb of PCMCIA bus address space into which
     to map the device; the driver will use the (slightly slower) i/o-space only
     access methods to read and write to the shared memory.  Since  by	default,
     NetBSD,  only  allocates  16kb of address space per PCMCIA controller, this
     message is in some sense to be expected and  should  not  be  a  cause  for
     alarm.   See pcmcia(4) for information on how to increase the memory avail-
     able to the PCMCIA controller.

     awi0: failed to complete selftest (%s)  The device failed to  complete  its
     self test.

     awi0:  synced  with  no-bssid  at	channel %d  The device is ready to relay
     traffic at specified channel.

     awi0: synced with %s ssid %s at channel %d   The  device  has  successfully
     synchronized  with  at least one of the identified stations and is ready to
     relay traffic.

     awi0: associated with %s ssid %s channel %d signal %d  The device has  suc-
     cessfully synchronized with the identified Access Point and is ready to re-
     lay traffic.

     awi0: authentication failed (reason %d)
     awi0: association failed (reason %d)  The access point refuses the associa-
     tion request from the device.

     awi0:  no	recent	beacons  from %s; rescanning  The device has not heard a
     beacon from its currently associated Access Point recently, and is  looking
     for a new access point.

     awi0:  transmit  timeout  The device failed to generate an interrupt to ac-
     knowledge a transmitted packet.

     awi0: failed to lock interrupt  The system was unable to obtain the lock to
     access shared memory.

     awi0: command %d failed %x  The device failed to complete the request  from
     the system.

BUGS
     Doesn't create IBSS itself.

SEE ALSO
     arp(4),  cnw(4),  ifmedia(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), pcmcia(4), wi(4), if-
     config(8)

     Am79C930 PCnet Mobile Single-Chip Wireless  LAN  Media  Access  Controller,
     http://www.amd.com.

HISTORY
     The awi device driver first appeared in NetBSD 1.5.

AUTHORS
     The  initial  version  of	the  awi  driver  was written by Bill Sommerfeld
     <sommerfeld@netbsd.org>.  Then the awi driver module  completely  rewritten
     to  support  cards  with  DS  phy and to support adhoc mode by Atsushi Onoe
     <onoe@netbsd.org>.

FreeBSD 4.8			October 31, 1999			  AWI(4)
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