WaveLAN and RoamAbout Support in Linux

Update: This information has been updated to include the WaveLAN (now known as Orinoco) 11Mbps Silver/Gold PC Cards and Cabletron RoamAbout PC Card. Additional information about using WEP (wired equivalent privacy) is available separately.

This page is about using the WaveLAN wireless LAN PC card with Linux. A binary driver library is provided by Lucent for their older Turbo 8Mbps Bronze cards, but which also works with newer variants of the cards. The supported cards are:

WaveLAN Turbo 8Mbps Bronze PC Card: This is 802.11 compliant only at 2Mbps. The 8Mbps mode is proprietary to Lucent. This card does not support WEP.
WaveLAN Turbo 11Mbps Silver/Gold PC Card: These cards are 802.11 compliant at 11Mbps and support WEP with 40-bit and 128-bit encryption (for Silver and Gold respectively). I have not personally tested the Gold variant, but I believe the information here applies to it just as well.
Cabletron RoamAbout: This card is OEM'ed from Lucent and is functionally identical to the WaveLAN Turbo 11Mbps PC Cards. It supports WEP too (40-bit and 128-bit versions available).

Since these are all basically WaveLAN cards, I'll just refer to them all as WaveLAN below.

The WaveLAN cards provide notebooks with wireless Ethernet connectivity via a base station known as an Access Point. The base station acts as a bridge between the wireless LAN and a wired Ethernet LAN. The WaveLAN cards have a little section that sticks out of the PCMCIA slot and houses the antenna; This is somewhat more elegant that having a separate antenna unit (as in the old WaveLAN designs).

Required Software

To use the WaveLAN card in Linux, you need to install at least two software. The first is the PCMCIA support, which typically already comes with your Linux distribution. You will need to have the source in order to compile support for the wireless PCMCIA card.

Next, you also need to get the WaveLAN/IEEE Software for Linux. This is distributed by Lucent Technologies. The PCMCIA package itself also comes with a WaveLAN driver, but I don't know if this will work with the Turbo version of the card.

Get the PCMCIA source from the PCMCIA Homepage. I am using version 3.1.6.
WaveLAN/IEEE Software for Linux. I am using version 4.00.

Linux Installation

The installation procedure involves merging the WaveLAN driver source into the PCMCIA source, recompiling the PCMCIA software and then installing the PCMCIA package. Make sure you are running as the root user when you begin as the actual software installation and configuration requires root privileges.

Extract the PCMCIA distribution archive. You need to specify the actual location of the archive. For our example here, we will build the source in /usr/src.
$ cd /usr/src $ tar zxvf pcmcia-cs-3.1.6.tar.gz
Extract the WaveLAN/IEEE distribution archive into the PCMCIA source directory.
$ cd pcmcia-cs-3.1.6 $ tar zxvf wavelan2_cs-4.00.tar.gz
For Red Hat users, you want to use the PCMCIA network script that Red Hat provides. The PCMCIA installation step replaces this script with its own unnecessarily more complicated version. So, save a copy of the Red Hat version now.
$ cp /etc/pcmcia/network /etc/pcmcia/network.rh
Build and install the PCMCIA package according to the instructions in the PCMCIA-HOWTO file (in the pcmcia-cs-3.1.6 directory). You can usually accept all the defaults in the make config step.
$ make config $ make all $ make install
For Red Hat users, you should use the PCMCIA network script provided by Red Hat. Restore your saved copy.
$ cp /etc/pcmcia/network.rh /etc/pcmcia/network
Configure your network eth0 interface. For Red Hat users, edit the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 script, if necessary, so that it contains:
DEVICE="eth0" BOOTPROTO="dhcp" ONBOOT="no" IPADDR="" NETMASK=""
For other Linux distributions, you may need to modify the PCMCIA network options file /etc/pcmcia/network.opts.
Configure the WaveLAN PC Card. Add the following line to the end of the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file:
module "wavelan2_cs" opts "network_name=NUS\ Wireless"
The network name 'NUS Wireless' is used in the NUS Wireless SPnP pilot and enables your WaveLAN IEEE Turbo PC Card to communicate with the NUS wireless base stations.
It is normally sufficient to restart PCMCIA services, but you need to make sure that all related kernel modules are properly unloaded so that the newly compiled modules are used when PCMCIA restarts. On Red Hat systems, use this command:
$ /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia restart
If you are not sure how to make sure the newly compiled modules are loaded, it is best to reboot your system:
$ /sbin/shutdown -r now

Using the WaveLAN Card

To use your WaveLAN IEEE Turbo PC Card, you must be in an area covered by a wireless base station.

Insert your WaveLAN card. You should hear two high beeps. If not, consult the troubleshooting secton in /usr/src/pcmcia-cs-3.1.6/README.wavelan2_cs.
This is specific to the NUS SPnP network. You need to do a web-based SPnP login before you can begin using the SPnP network. You can use a web browser such as Lynx or Netscape to access the SPnP login page. Using Lynx:
$ lynx http://pnp.nus.edu.sg/cgi-bin/login.py
Complete the login using your NUSNET account userid and password. You can then begin using the SPnP network.

Other Driver Parameters

The WaveLAN/IEEE driver supports several parameters that you can specify in the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file. The network name as given above is one example. Multiple parameters can be specified by separating them by spaces. Make sure that spaces in paramter values are properly escaped. Example:

module "wavelan2_cs" opts network_name=NUS\ Wireless card_power_management=y"

Here is a list of useful parameters.

network_name: This is the wireless network name that your notebook should "join" to. You can give a wildcard value ANY to mean any network (provided that the base station is operating in "open mode"). For the NUS SPnP network, this value should be NUS\ Wireless (remember to escape the space).
card_power_management: Sets the power management mode. Specify a value of y or n. Power management puts the card into doze mode when idle. According to Lucent specifications for the 11Mbps card, transmit mode consumes 285 mA, receive mode consumes 185 mA and doze mode consumes just 9 mA.
station_name: Sets your wireless station name to identify your notebook in the wireless network. You don't really need to set this.

You need to restart PCMCIA services in order for changes to this file to take effect. You'll have to eject your WaveLAN card in order for PCMCIA services to restart correctly. To restart PCMCIA services:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia restart