MirBSD manpage: rln(4)
RLN(4) BSD Programmer's Manual RLN(4)
rln - device driver for RangeLAN2-based wireless network cards
rln0 at isa? port 0x270 irq ? flags 0x00
rln* at pcmcia? function ? flags 0x00
The rln device driver supports at least the following cards:
• Proxim RangeLAN2 7100 ISA Card
• Symphony PC Cards
• Proxim RangeLAN2 7200 Two Piece PC Card
• Proxim RangeLAN2 7400 One Piece PC Card
• Digital RoamAbout FH 2400 PC-Card
• AMP Wireless PC-Card
The Proxim RangeLAN2 air protocol is incompatible with the older
RangeLAN(1) cards, Lucent Technologies' WaveLan cards, and with the newer
802.11 cards in general.
The RangeLAN2 cards communicate using an Ethernet-like protocol over the
2.4-2.483GHz part of the spectrum. This frequency happens to coincide
with that of strong harmonics emitted by common consumer microwave ovens.
You can guess the rest. Depending on the channel condition, the NICs
operate in one of two modes: 1.6Mb/s or 0.8Mb/s signalling rate.
In the event of errors, the card can be reset by using ifconfig(8) to
bring the card down, then up.
Not supported. The medium used by the device is always air.
rln0: hardware fault The card reported a hardware fault condition. Check
the antenna. The interface is automatically marked down.
rln0: synchronised to ? (?) channel ?/? The card has successfully syn-
chronised with a nearby unit. Packets are only transmitted when the unit
has synchronised with another.
rln0: lost sync Synchronisation was lost. Check for microwave ovens be-
ing used.
rln0: nothing to sync to; now master The card was unsuccessful in (re-
)synchronising with any other unit, and was configured as an alternate
master.
rln0: packet too big (? > ?) The card generated a message bigger than
the maximum size allowable for Ethernet.
rln0: command error 0x?? command ?? The card reported an error condition
in the host-card protocol.
rln0: reset timeout An attempt to hard reset the card failed. This is
either a serious hardware fault, or a bus conflict.
rln0: tx_request timed out, status 0x?? The host-to-card message
transfer protocol timed out. This could mean a duplex transfer is in pro-
gress and the interrupt service routine has not run. Check the CPU load.
rln0: lost message ?? seq ? An expected response to the command did not
appear within a reasonable time.
rln0: unknown RangeLAN2 wireless network card The card model was not
matched in the known-card tables.
cnw(4), intro(4), isa(4), netintro(4), pcmcia(4), ifconfig(8)
http://www.proxim.com/
David Leonard, Dept Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Univer-
sity of Queensland <david.leonard@csee.uq.edu.au>.
Information and ideas gleaned from disassembly of Dave Koberstein's
<davek@komacke.com> Linux driver (which apparently uses Proxim code),
from Yoichi Shinoda's <shinoda@cs.washington.edu> BSDI driver, and Geoff
Voelker's <voelker@cs.washington.edu> Linux port of the same.
This driver has not been tested with lots of cards, so there are bound to
be subtle timing problems with different hardware. It should also work
with the Symphony PC cards.
I couldn't figure out how to make roaming work, nor how to interpret the
RSSI link quality values.
There is no way to change the channel or security ID on the card, or to
make it a master, except through source code. This is because it is
currently impossible under OpenBSD to trigger such changes through calls
to ioctl(2) on the interface.
Oh, and transmit doesn't seem to work.
MirBSD #10-current April 2, 1999 1