Re: FW: Ath5k driver status

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 21:24 -0400, Philip A. Culver wrote:
> Hello,
> 
>  
> 
> I sent the below message to the ath5k-devel list but figured I would
> CC here as I am using NetworkManager 0.6.6 to see who plays better
> with NetworkManager.   It also looks to me like madwifi does not
> support the scan capa patch?

Probably not.

>  
> 
> I am trying to find out the current status of the Ath5k driver as
> compared to madwifi 0.9.4.   I tried googling for some results and
> checked out madwifi.org but didn’t see anything definitive.

ath5k does not yet support some PCI-E Atheros cards, like the ones found
in the Eeepc, for example.  It's still somewhat immature, but Nick keeps
making it better.

> I am using both an AR5212 based card (manufactured by Cisco) and 

An AIR-CB21AG-A-K9 perhaps?  I've got a few of those so I could
potentially test them out, they should be pretty standard Atheros parts.

> possibly an AR5006X miniPCI card and was wondering how ath5k compares
> to madwifi.   Which should I use?   Currently I am using madwifi but
> experience some stability issues.  I am on Fedora and the kernel I am
> using is a modified Fedora 2.6.23.15-80 based kernel.  I am not
> necessarily opposed to updating the kernel version I am using but
> would prefer not to.  I need to support LEAP, WPA/WPA2 PSK and
> Enterprise (subset of), and WEP.

Basically, in the near future you'll want to use ath5k, not madwifi.
There's quite a lot of value in using the same underlying code that most
of the other drivers do (mac80211 to be precise), because it will just
work better.  At the moment though, madwifi may work better for specific
parts.  Not entirely sure.  But ath5k in recent kernels (2.6.24, 2.6.25)
should work pretty well with the common Atheros parts that are out
there.

Dan