Re: Orinoco WPA/WPA2 ready on Linux, or just WEP?

[Wolfgang Pfeiffer <roto@gmx.net>]

Hi Sven

Thanks for your answer ...

On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 11:17:25PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 07, 2005 at 05:02:58PM +0200, Wolfgang Pfeiffer wrote:
> > Hi all
> > 
> > I'd like to know whether the "standard" Apple Airport card, about 2
> > years old, can handle WPA[2] key negotiation with the latest 2.6
> > kernels:
> 
> Well, from my experience at debconf 05, whose wireless network seem to need
> wpa stuff, i would say no, since nobody here has managed to make it work.


You might be right: From what I learned the last days: You might get
WPA working with "Hermes I" (or is this actually Orinoco Silver? .. )
with wpasupplicant: But you need a 2.4 Kernel.

One of the supported drivers for wpasupplicant:
"Agere Systems Inc. Linux Driver (Hermes-I/Hermes-II chipset) (WPA, but not WPA2)"
http://hostap.epitest.fi/wpa_supplicant/

wpasupplicant says in its README
[<http://hostap.epitest.fi/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/hostap/wpa_supplicant/README?rev=1.84&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup>, excerpt]:

------------------------
Current hardware/software requirements:
- Linux kernel 2.4.x or 2.6.x with Linux Wireless Extensions v15 or newer

        [ .... ]

	Agere Systems Inc. Linux Driver
	(http://www.agere.com/support/drivers/)
	Please note that the driver interface file (driver_hermes.c) and
	hardware specific include files are not included in the
	wpa_supplicant distribution. You will need to copy these from the
	source package of the Agere driver.
-------------------------


Agere's latest driver from
<http://www.agere.com/mobility/wireless_lan_drivers.html>
(<http://www.agere.com/mobility/docs/wl_lkm_722_abg.tar.gz>) in turn
supports only hermes II/II.5 (on 2.4), the, as it seems, older one
(also 2.4 only, AFAIKS) both Hermes I and Hermes II:
<http://www.agere.com/mobility/docs/wl_lkm_718_release.tar.gz>

So unless I missed some important facts (definitely possible, as
documentation for Linux/Orinoco in general, for what I found, seems to
be a catastrophe) I need another radio card, as I'm not prepared to
return back to 2.4 only to get a secure WLAN running ..

My main problem still is that I do not know exactly what I have on
this card, as the Apple naming convention actually is unusable:
Apple Airport, and Airport Extreme, whatever this may be  ...

Or is there Prism compatible stuff on this card? If yes, one might try
hostapd ...

Thanks again ..

Best Regards
Wolfgang

-- 
Wolfgang Pfeiffer
http://profiles.yahoo.com/wolfgangpfeiffer