I have been trying to get my wireless network to establish an ad-hoc network and I just can't seem to do it. It appears the linux 2.6.31 kernel does not support the RealTek 8185L (Encore ENLWI-G2) wireless card I have. The drivers it does install are older and seem to not support Ad-Hoc networking.
Can anyone recommend a wireless card and/or a linux distro that easily supports ad-hoc networking? I have the tried latest openSuse and Ubuntu distros.
Is this a common problem with Linux? I have set up wireless ad-hoc networks before in windows and never really had a problem.
Or better yet - does anyone have patches to the realtek 8185L drivers to use the net_device_ops struct as opposed to the deprecated net_device struct?
Thanks
Eric
Hi Eric,
there are a lot of wifi cards and drivers which don't support ad-hoc mode. I had bad experience with RTL based wifi cards. More info about drivers and supported modes can be found here:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers
Try to use Atheros based cards, most of them support Ad-Hoc mode.
best regards, Simon
On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 04:45:50PM -0500, Conner, Eric wrote:
I have been trying to get my wireless network to establish an ad-hoc network and I just can't seem to do it. It appears the linux 2.6.31 kernel does not support the RealTek 8185L (Encore ENLWI-G2) wireless card I have. The drivers it does install are older and seem to not support Ad-Hoc networking.
Can anyone recommend a wireless card and/or a linux distro that easily supports ad-hoc networking? I have the tried latest openSuse and Ubuntu distros.
Is this a common problem with Linux? I have set up wireless ad-hoc networks before in windows and never really had a problem.
Or better yet - does anyone have patches to the realtek 8185L drivers to use the net_device_ops struct as opposed to the deprecated net_device struct?
Thanks
Eric
B.A.T.M.A.N mailing list B.A.T.M.A.N@lists.open-mesh.net https://lists.open-mesh.net/mm/listinfo/b.a.t.m.a.n
Hi Eric,
I've been through your same situation, under a very stressful circumstance: implementing my master thesis. I found out that that most adapters really suck at implementing ad-hoc mode. However, there are some very decent adapters that are cheap and have very stable drivers.
* Atheros: As Simon said, it is one of the best. Most laptops come with some sort of atheros chipset built in. I was not happy on finding external adapters with atheros chipsets, but that was about a year ago. Things may have changed.
* Edimax EW-7318USg (Ralink chipset): Today, it is one of the best. No cell-splits, no hassles, no problems. Rock-solid driver, works "plug-n-pĺay" on Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10. In addition, it's very cheap and supports external antennas. USB.
* Alfa Networks AWUS036H: Very, very good... but a little expensive (at least here in Brazil). The best driver for this adapter is the one with the Backtrack distribution (www.remote-exploit.org). Since it is used a lot for Wardriving, etc.. monitor and ad-hoc mode is very stable. USB.
My experience with these three adapters was awesome. They saved me :).
Hey guys, perhaps this kind of information should be on the wiki. That may help a lot of people. I could elaborate into more details if you guys are interested.
best regards,
- Alfa Networks AWUS036H: Very, very good... but a little expensive
(at least here in Brazil). The best driver for this adapter is the one with the Backtrack distribution (www.remote-exploit.org). Since it is used a lot for Wardriving, etc.. monitor and ad-hoc mode is very stable. USB.
Haven't tried the driver which is in Backtrack yet. But the current one shipped with Debian unstable does not allow ad-hoc mode, just managed and monitor mode (with packet injection possibilities).
Cheers, Linus
Hello all -
I have been into testing and finding wireless drivers that do the trick in ad-hoc mode for quite a while. Linux has made great progress with this regard. Since 2.6.31 you can fix the cell-id with the command
iwconfig <interface> ap 01:CA:FF:EE:BA:BE
Actually I have seen Linux-wireless drivers work properly in ad-hoc mode before station mode became stable (who needs station mode if you have proper ad-hoc mode, anyway ;-) For anything supported by recent Linux-Wireless drivers chances are that ad-hoc works flawlessly. (As long as there are no binary-only firmware bugs...)
Hall of fame: (Not a complete list, add your favorite drivers, if you have a solution for problems mentioned here, please share, some info I'm providing may be outdated)
Atheros 802.11abg with Openwrt version of Madwifi driver (note that the vanilla Madwifi does not work) Supports ahdemo mode, and range/MAC timing settings, and many other cool things. Only supports PCI/PCIe/Cardbus - no USB
ath5k (Atheros 802.11abg) - use a recent version of the Linux kernel >2.6.28 and compile the newest compat-wireless sources against it - no USB
ath9k (Atheros 802.11abgn) - use a recent version of the Linux kernel >2.6.28 and compile the newest compat-wireless sources against it - no USB
iwlagn (Intel 4965) - I have this card in a Lenovo T61, works excellent, but there is a problem with suspend/resume (driver/card doesn't wake up properly, so I unload/reload the driver) Haven't updated the driver recently, may be already fixed in recent compat-wireless
Working, but some issues:
Everything USB-based that I know has at least one problem :-| Some stability issues may only occur if you have a mix of different drivers/hardware in your mesh.
rt73 - kind of works, but AFAIK there are problems with the ad-hoc neighbor station speed table. Problem is firmware/hardware related AFAIK - closed source firmware.
zd1211rw - Zydas chipset, now property of Atheros - not fully stable in my tests, seems to be firmware related - closed source firmware. Also problems with ad-hoc neighbor speed table.
ar9170usb - Atheros 802.11abgn USB - a promising candidate, open source firmware, driver development in a relatively early stage and therefore probably not stable yet. I'm currently testing it some more. Expensive.
Looking forward to your additions/corrections. I'm very much looking forward to get the first proper working USB driver! Would be brilliant to have!
Cheers, Elektra
* elektra onelektra@gmx.net [20.12.2009 16:00]:
iwconfig <interface> ap 01:CA:FF:EE:BA:BE
hi elektra,
please don't do the mistake again:
ad-hoc cell's must begin with 02: to keep it clean. (means IMHO: unicast + locally administered)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address
so use: 02:BE:EF:CA:FF:EE 8-)
bye, Bastian. - cu @ 26c3
Hello Bastian -
well, one might argue about that. The IBSSID is not a MAC address, IMHO. The IBSSID uses a EUI-48 identifier format. In master mode the BSSID is derived from the AP NICs MAC address. So if you override the factory MAC with a locally configured MAC of your APs NIC, you ought to use 02: rather than 00:, true.
However IBSSID's according to 802.11 protocol ought to be randomly generated - and most drivers do just that, regardless whether they begin with 02: or not. (I think the old Orinoco firmware did it that way, but I'm not sure)
So I think it is OK to use whatever you like and is easy to remember, except 00:00:00:00:00:00 or FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
so use: 02:BE:EF:CA:FF:EE 8-)
Of course.
The problem with the popular IBSSID 02:CA:FF:EE:BA:BE is that you get strange effects if you have two different ad-hoc cells in range, which are accidently using the same IBSSID...
Cheers, Elektra
(cu @26c3:)
b.a.t.m.a.n@lists.open-mesh.org
-
Bastian Bittorf -
Breno Jacinto -
Conner, Eric -
elektra -
Linus Lüssing -
Simon Wunderlich