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AN(4)			     Kernel Interfaces Manual			   AN(4)

NAME
     an -- Aironet Communications 4500/4800 wireless network adapter driver

SYNOPSIS
     To compile support for the
     an driver into your kernel, place the following lines in your kernel
	configuration file:

	   device an
	   device wlan

	Alternatively, to load the
     an driver at boot time, place the following lines in loader.conf(5):

	      if_an_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION
     The  an  driver  provides	support for Aironet Communications 4500 and 4800
     wireless network adapters and variants, including the following:

	   *   Aironet Communications 4500 and 4800 series
	   *   Cisco Aironet 340 and 350 series
	   *   Xircom Wireless Ethernet Adapter

     Support for these devices include the ISA, PCI and PCMCIA	varieties.   The
     Aironet  4500 series adapters operate at 1 and 2Mbps while the Aironet 4800
     series and Cisco adapters can operate at 1, 2, 5.5 and  11Mbps.   The  ISA,
     PCI  and  PCMCIA  devices are all based on the same core PCMCIA modules and
     all have the same programming interface, however unlike  the  Lucent  Wave-
     LAN/IEEE  cards, the ISA and PCI cards appear to the host as normal ISA and
     PCI devices and do not require any PCCARD support.

     The PCMCIA Aironet cards require PC Card support, including the kernel  pc-
     card(4)  driver.	ISA  cards  can either be configured to use ISA Plug and
     Play or to use a particular I/O address and IRQ by properly setting the DIP
     switches on the board.  (The default switch setting is for Plug and  Play.)
     The  an driver has Plug and Play support and will work in either configura-
     tion, however when using a hard-wired I/O address and IRQ, the driver  con-
     figuration  and the NIC's switch settings must agree.  PCI cards require no
     switch settings of any kind and will be automatically probed and attached.

     All host/device interaction with the Aironet cards is via	programmed  I/O.
     The  Aironet devices support 802.11 and 802.3 frames, power management, BSS
     (infrastructure) and IBSS (ad-hoc) operation modes.  The an driver encapsu-
     lates all IP and ARP traffic as 802.11 frames, however it can  receive  ei-
     ther  802.11  or 802.3 frames.  Transmit speed is selectable between 1Mbps,
     2Mbps, 5.5Mbps, 11Mbps or "auto" (the NIC automatically  chooses  the  best
     speed).

     By  default,  the	an driver configures the Aironet card for infrastructure
     operation.

     For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

DIAGNOSTICS
     an%d: init failed	The Aironet card failed to become ready  after	an  ini-
     tialization command was issued.

     an%d: failed to allocate %d bytes on NIC  The driver was unable to allocate
     memory for transmit frames in the NIC's on-board RAM.

     an%d:  device  timeout  The Aironet card failed to generate an interrupt to
     acknowledge a transmit command.

SEE ALSO
     arp(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), wlan(4), ancontrol(8), ifconfig(8)

HISTORY
     The an device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 4.0.

AUTHORS
     The an driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@ee.columbia.edu>.

FreeBSD 6.0			  July 16, 2005 			   AN(4)

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