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ath9k

ath9k is a completely FOSS wireless driver for all Atheros IEEE 802.11n PCI/PCI-Express and AHB WLAN based chipsets.

Contents

1. ath9k
2. Subscribe to this page!
3. Mailing list
4. Get the latest ath9k driver
5. Enabling ath9k
6. Bluetooth coexistence
7. supported chipsets
8. Available devices
9. Features and modes of operation
   1. Modes of operation
   2. Features
10. A little history on ath9k
    1. When it went in
    2. Early distributions which picked it up
11. Other sections

Subscribe to this page!

You should subscribe to this page so you can get e-mail updates on changes and news for ath9k automatically. You'll get an e-mail as soon as this page gets updated.

Mailing list

Our mailing list for this driver is:

https://lists.ath9k.org/mailman/listinfo/ath9k-devel

Get the latest ath9k driver

Any distribution shipping a kernel >= 2.6.27 will have ath9k present but the ath9k driver on 2.6.32 is the oldest one recommended, anything older than that is completely unsupported. Below is a list of the minimal distribution requirements to either use ath9k from 2.6.27 or from compat-wireless, which lets you install newer drivers on older kernels.

• Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10)
• Fedora Core 10
• openSUSE 11.1
• Mandriva Linux 2009.0 (formally known as Mandrake Linux)
• ARCH Linux
• Gentoo Linux
• Red Flag Linux 7.0 (based on Fedora 10)

• RHEL5 using 2.6.32 ath9k backported to 2.6.18

If you want to get the latest ath9k driver you can get it by using the wireless-testing git tree. Read our git-guide for that. Alternatively you can download and compile ath9k and its dependencies alone by using compat-wireless. After downloading you can run:

./scripts/driver-select ath9kmakesudo make install

Enabling ath9k

To enable ath9k, you must first enable mac80211:

Networking  --->Wireless  ---> Improved wireless configuration API Generic IEEE 802.11 Networking Stack (mac80211)

You can then enable ath9k in the kernel configuration under

Device Drivers  --->[*] Network device support  --->Wireless LAN  --->   Atheros 802.11n wireless cards support

QUESTION: Do the above boxes refer to a GUI, or..? What does "Networking —> Wireless —>" mean? I'm not sure where to look. If it's a GUI, what window manager does it refer to?? Is there a command line version?

ANSWER: The above boxes refer to a ncurses user interface. You can get to these menus by typing "make menuconfig" in the Linux kernel source directory.

Bluetooth coexistence

ath9k supports 2-wire and 3-wire Bluetooth coexistence, for details see the ath9k btcoex page.

supported chipsets

SB = single-band 2.4GHz DB = dual-band 2.4GHz or 5GHz

Legacy:

• AR2427 (>= 2.6.32.16, no 802.11n hardware support, its bonded out) 1x1 SB PCIe

AR5008:

• AR5418+AR5133 (>= 2.6.27) AR5418 = DB 11n PCIe, AR5133 = 3x3 DB 11n

• AR5416+AR5133 (>= 2.6.27) AR5416 = DB 11n PCI

• AR5416+AR2133 (>= 2.6.27) AR2133 = 3x3 SB 11n

AR9001:

• AR9160 (>= 2.6.27) DB 11n

• AR9102 (>= 2.6.30, AHB) 2x2 SB 11n

• AR9103 (>= 2.6.30, AHB) 3x3 SB 11n

AR9002:

• AR9220 (>= 2.6.27, an AR9280 card over PCI) 2x2 DB 11n PCI

• AR9280 (>= 2.6.27) 2x2 DB 11n PCIe

• AR9281 (>= 2.6.27) 2x2 SB 11n PCIe

• AR9285 (>= 2.6.29) 1x1 SB 11n PCIe

• AR9287 (>= 2.6.32) 2x2 SB 11n PCIe

AR9003:

• AR9380 (>= 2.6.36) 3x3 DB 11n PCIe

• AR9382 (>= 2.6.36) 2x2 DB 11n PCIe

AR9004:

• AR9485 (>= 2.6.39) 1x1 SB 11n PCIe

Available devices

See the ath9k device list.

Features and modes of operation

All of these modes of operation are supported and should work on all ath9k cards.

Modes of operation

• Station Mode

• AP Mode

• IBSS Mode

• Monitor Mode

• Mesh point

• WDS (as of >= 2.6.37)

Features

• 802.11abg
• 802.11n
  • HT20
  • HT40
  • AMPDU
  • Short GI (40 MHz only)
• 802.11i
  • WEP 64 / 127
  • WPA1 / WPA2
• 802.11d
• 802.11h
• 802.11w/D7.0
• WPS client side (use wpa_gui-qt4 from wpa_supplicant for now)
• WMM
• LED
• RFKILL
• BT co-existence
• 64-bit support / big endian, small endian
• AHB and PCI bus

A little history on ath9k

When it went in

ath9k was announced to have been merged into Linux-2.6.27-rc3 by Linus on Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:33:16 -0700 (PDT), and consisted of 58.8% of the entire rc3 patch.

Early distributions which picked it up

OpenWrt became the first distribution to pick up ath9k and contribute to it.

Other sections

For more information please see:

• ath9k module size and its dependents

• power consumption - power consumption details with ath9k

• ath9k btcoex support

• ath9k bugs

• ath9k TODO page

• ath9k debugging

• products with supported ath9k cards

• ath9k_hw module - documentation about the ath9k_hw module

• ath.ko module - used for shared code between Atheros devices

• Solaris ath9k port - arn