From: kjell_at_endian.se
Date: 2002-10-15 06:43:16 UTC
Hi Jouni and list,
Thank You very much for Your answer, that clarified the issue quite a bit for me.
Now, I have today been testing out downloading the tertiary firmware
file into my cards RAM using the prism2_srec utility as You advised, but
I ran into some unexpected problems:
The prism2_srec aborts, reporting "info: compatibility...", my firmware
S3 is reported to be of type 4-4 (indicating "tertiary=4"?) while my
card seems to be of 1-3.
Am I correct in understanding this as that my cards firmware is not capable of downloading/executing a tertiary firmware? Being a little brutal, I commented out that check in the prism2_srec code and tried it anyway; it seems that the firmware gets loaded, but the initialise command then fails...
If my card is not supporting this; When You wrote this stuff, what
type(s) of card did You try this out with? I'm especially interested in
getting hold of some Prism2.5-based PCI-card that is capable of running
a tertiary firmware.
Or do You perhaps know of any way to patch/upgrade my cards firmware so
that this can be supported on my D-Link DWL-520 hardware? Could there be
a level-3 firmware from Intersil that I could first flash in, then
supporting level-4 firmware??
I'd be most greatful for any advice.
Cheers,
/Kjell
Jouni Malinen wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 09:27:28AM +0200, kjell_at_endian.se wrote:
>
>
>>I was first thinking of comparing the hostap with the wlan-ng driver,
>>but when I browsed the hostap code I found the stuff in the
>>"hostap_download"-file, which I _think_ seems to cover more than just
>>handling the PDA stuff(?)
>
>
> Yes, current version of Host AP driver supports RAM download (if
> compiled with PRISM2_DOWNLOAD_SUPPORT defined). In other words, it can
> download one image (secondary (station) firmware or tertiary (AP)
> firmware) to wlan card RAM.
>
>
>>So my questions are;
>>- Does the hostap driver also support downloading and initiating a
>>tertiary firmware?
>
>
> Yes.
>
>
>>- Does the hostap driver support working with a Prism2 chipset in
>>firmware ap mode?
>
>
> I wouldn't call this supported operation mode, but it might work. I have
> not really tested it more than confirming that the firmware AP is
> initialized properly.
>
>
>>If the answer to my second question is negative, could anyone give me a
>>hint what it would take to get the hostap driver to work together with a
>>tertiary firmware?
>
>
> Feel free to test it. prism2_srec should be able to download the AP
> firmware and initialize the card with it. After this, you should be able
> to associate with the AP (auth & assoc processed by the firmware). With
> good luck, data packets are delivered correctly even with firmware AP.
> If not, some minor changes might be needed for prism2_tx() and
> prism2_rx() functions.
>
> There are some (more or less optional) AP firmware functionality that
> has not been implemented in the Host AP driver, so you might want to
> experiment with that if you choose to use Host AP driver also for
> testing firmware-based AP functionality. This includes things like
> getting information about authenticated stations and setting up
> "enhanced security" features (SSID hiding), etc.
>