NOTE: this page is for archival only, see the note at the end of the page.

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Atheros Linux wireless drivers

This page documents all Atheros Communications Linux wireless drivers.

Shared modules

Atheros drivers tend to follow a lineage of hardware families and as they progress pick things up from one family or another and sometimes keep things the same. So hardware or EEPROM layouts can share certain characteristics and the same code can be reused through different hardware families.

We have a few shared modules for Atheros 802.11 drivers:

  • ath - code that is common amongst all hardware families

  • ath9k_hw - common hardware code for all 802.11n devices

  • ath9k_common - common driver helpers / mac80211 callbacks for all 802.11n devices

IRC

For support and development for all drivers we use the #linux-wireless IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

PCI / PCI-E / AHB Drivers

Technology

Legacy driver

Upstream driver

802.11abg

MadWifi

ath5k

802.11n

None

ath9k

USB Drivers

Technology

Legacy driver

Upstream driver

802.11b

None

zd1201

802.11bg

zd1211

zd1211rw

802.11abg

None

ar5523 support under development

802.11abgn

otus

ar9170 (Open firmware available)

802.11bgn

None

ath9k_htc

Mobile

Licensing

To help other FOSS Operating Systems, when possible, Atheros licenses their device drivers source code under a permissive license. Atheros picked the ISC License due to historical reasons, mainly that of the ath5k developers also choosing it to help share code between Linux and OpenBSD. Atheros follows this tradition to further assist not only OpenBSD but also other FOSS Operating Systems. There are a few exceptions to using the ISC license on Atheros drivers, when in doubt consult the header of the file for the respective license of the file.

As far as firmware is concerned Atheros does try to open source firmware when possible with the first release being that of ar9170.fw. When not possible (lack of resources mainly) we do try to work with the community to see if this can be done through side community work, and only if not possible at all do we release firmware as binary with a friendly standard redistributable license.


This is a static dump of the old wiki, taken after locking it in January 2015. The new wiki is at https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/.
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