cnw(4) - NetBSD Manual Pages

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CNW(4)                  NetBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual                 CNW(4)


NAME

     cnw -- Netwave AirSurfer wireless network driver


SYNOPSIS

     cnw*     at pcmcia? function ?


DESCRIPTION

     The cnw interface provides access to a theoretical 1 Mb/s wireless Ether-
     net network based on the Netwave AirSurfer Wireless LAN (formerly known
     as the Xircom Netwave Wireless LAN).

     Note that the driver does not support newer devices such as the Netwave
     AirSurfer ``Plus'', or the BayStack 650/660.  These devices are supported
     by the awi(4) driver.

     Netwave devices are not compatible with IEEE 802.11 wireless networks.
     Also note that there are Netwave devices with different wireless fre-
     quency, depending on the radio band plan in each country.

     The card uses 36K of I/O memory mapped to the card.  You may need to
     increase memory space available to the PCMCIA controller.  See pcmcia(4)
     for details.

     In use, the cards appear to achieve up to a 420Kb/s transfer rate, though
     a transfer rate between 250Kb/s and 350Kb/s is typical.

     The card operates in the 2.4GHz frequency range and is subject to inter-
     ference from microwaves, IEEE 802.11 wireless network devices, as well as
     earth.  For example, it seems that IEEE 802.11 channel 14 conflicts with
     Netwave (US frequency).  They interfere with each other if they are both
     operated in the same geographic region, causing weird packet loss.  You
     may be able to avoid the interference with IEEE 802.11 devices, by chang-
     ing the IEEE 802.11 channel.


HARDWARE

     Cards supported by the cnw driver include:

           Xircom CreditCard Netwave

           NetWave AirSurfer


DIAGNOSTICS

     cnw0: can't map memory  Indicates that the driver was not able to allo-
     cate enough PCMCIA bus address space into which to map the device.  See
     pcmcia(4) and increase memory available to the PCMCIA controller.


SEE ALSO

     arp(4), awi(4), inet(4), intro(4), pcmcia(4), cnwctl(8)

NetBSD 5.0                      January 5, 1997                     NetBSD 5.0