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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
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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. Below is a list of the minimal distribution requirements to either use ath9k from 2.6.27 or from compat-wireless.
- 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)
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 simply upgrade only your Linux wireless subsystem by using compat-wireless.
Enabling ath9k
To enable ath9k, you must first enable mac80211:
Networking ---> Wireless ---> <M> Improved wireless configuration API <M> Generic IEEE 802.11 Networking Stack (mac80211)
You can then enable ath9k in the kernel configuration under
Device Drivers ---> [*] Network device support ---> Wireless LAN ---> <M> Atheros 802.11n wireless cards support
Enabling bluetooth coexistance
You can enable bluetooth coexistance on ath9k by using the btcoex_enable module parameter. This is not enable by default as some devices have had issues with it.
modprobe ath9k btcoex_enable=1
supported chipsets
- AR5418+AR5133
- AR5416+AR5133
- AR5416+AR2133
- AR9160
- AR9280
- AR9281
AR9285 (>= 2.6.29)
AR9102 (AHB) (>= 2.6.30)
AR9103 (AHB) (>= 2.6.30)
Working
Modes of operation
Station Mode
AP Mode
IBSS Mode
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 (with a module parameter)
- 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: