Orinoco, mac80211 and wpa2

Orinoco, mac80211 and wpa2

[Jan Dittmer]

Hello,

I've a 802.11b Orinoco based integrated WLAN card in my
Sony Laptop (SRX51P). I'm using it with the in kernel 'orinoco-cs'
driver. The driver does not support connecting to wpa2
enabled networks. If I understand it correctly, the mac80211
can emulate wpa2 in software? Would porting the orinoco
driver to the new framework make it to possible to use wpa2
with it? Or is wpa2 hardware dependent?

Thanks,

Jan

Re: Orinoco, mac80211 and wpa2

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 15:14 +0200, Jan Dittmer wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I've a 802.11b Orinoco based integrated WLAN card in my
> Sony Laptop (SRX51P). I'm using it with the in kernel 'orinoco-cs'
> driver. The driver does not support connecting to wpa2
> enabled networks. If I understand it correctly, the mac80211
> can emulate wpa2 in software? Would porting the orinoco
> driver to the new framework make it to possible to use wpa2
> with it? Or is wpa2 hardware dependent?

WPA requires a combination of updated firmware and hardware support.  If
you card doesn't have the right hardware (though most are likely capable
of WPA-TKIP at least), it won't be able to do WPA.  If you do not have
firmware that is capable of WPA, you will not be able to do WPA.

Only a few manufacturers released updated firmware to support WPA-TKIP
and even fewer to support WPA-CCMP on cards that did not originally
support it.

In your case, some cards supported by the orinoco drivers _do_ have WPA
capability with a firmware upgrade and by using the 'hostap' drivers.
I'd try blacklisting the orinoco and see if the 'hostap' driver supports
your card.

Dan

Re: Orinoco, mac80211 and wpa2

[Pavel Roskin]

On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 10:42 -0400, Dan Williams wrote:

> In your case, some cards supported by the orinoco drivers _do_ have WPA
> capability with a firmware upgrade and by using the 'hostap' drivers.
> I'd try blacklisting the orinoco and see if the 'hostap' driver supports
> your card.

I think that Sony laptops have real Lucent Orinoco card, e.g.:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.20/+bug/66696/comments/11

Porting Orinoco driver to mac80211 would be a fun project, and I don't
think it's impossible.  It should be possible to dumb down the card,
turn off scanning and authentication and send raw packets.

I'm not sure if the firmware support would be needed, but Lucent 9.xx
firmware has WPA support.  Since it's RAM loadable, the firmware loading
will need to be added.  Fortunately, the implementation already exists
in the now defunct HermesAP project.

I have way too much stuff on my plate to even attempt it myself, but I
would not discourage others.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin

Re: Orinoco, mac80211 and wpa2

[Jouni Malinen]

On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 11:22:38AM -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote:

> Porting Orinoco driver to mac80211 would be a fun project, and I don't
> think it's impossible.  It should be possible to dumb down the card,
> turn off scanning and authentication and send raw packets.
> 
> I'm not sure if the firmware support would be needed, but Lucent 9.xx
> firmware has WPA support.  Since it's RAM loadable, the firmware loading
> will need to be added.  Fortunately, the implementation already exists
> in the now defunct HermesAP project.

If Orinoco cards added WPA support in the same (or similar) way as
Intersil Prism2/2.5/3, firmware support is certainly needed. In case of
Intersil, it was needed for adding WPA/RSN IE into (Re)AssocReq and to
receive Beacon/ProbeResp frames (to get WPA/RSN IE from AP). In
addition, the firmware must allow host-based encryption/decryption to be
enabled.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA

Re: Orinoco, mac80211 and wpa2

[Pavel Roskin]

On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 08:38 -0700, Jouni Malinen wrote:

> If Orinoco cards added WPA support in the same (or similar) way as
> Intersil Prism2/2.5/3, firmware support is certainly needed. In case of
> Intersil, it was needed for adding WPA/RSN IE into (Re)AssocReq and to
> receive Beacon/ProbeResp frames (to get WPA/RSN IE from AP). 

Since Orinoco 9.xx firmware has explicit support for WPA (at least for
TKIP), I guess it could be used for that with or without mac80211.

Another approach would be to send beacons and other management frames
from the host software, but I'm afraid the firmware would get in the way
somewhere.

> In addition, the firmware must allow host-based encryption/decryption to be
> enabled.

That's not a problem.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin

Re: Orinoco, mac80211 and wpa2

[Miles Lane]

If someone writes a driver for this, I am happy to help test.  I have
an old Orinoco card laying around.  It signal range is pretty poor, so
I don't test with it often.  Though, I find PCMCIA wifi cards are
often useful for surfacing bugs in the development kernel tree.

         Miles

Re: Orinoco, mac80211 and wpa2

[Erik Mouw]

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On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 12:25:38PM -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 08:38 -0700, Jouni Malinen wrote:
> 
> > If Orinoco cards added WPA support in the same (or similar) way as
> > Intersil Prism2/2.5/3, firmware support is certainly needed. In case of
> > Intersil, it was needed for adding WPA/RSN IE into (Re)AssocReq and to
> > receive Beacon/ProbeResp frames (to get WPA/RSN IE from AP). 
> 
> Since Orinoco 9.xx firmware has explicit support for WPA (at least for
> TKIP), I guess it could be used for that with or without mac80211.

Do you have any idea where I can find 9.xx firmware? The latest
firmware I can find for Orinoco PCMCIA Silver/Gold is 8.72.


Erik

-- 
They're all fools. Don't worry. Darwin may be slow, but he'll
eventually get them. -- Matthew Lammers in alt.sysadmin.recovery

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Re: Orinoco, mac80211 and wpa2

[Pavel Roskin]

On Fri, 2007-04-06 at 12:03 +0200, Erik Mouw wrote:
> > Since Orinoco 9.xx firmware has explicit support for WPA (at least for
> > TKIP), I guess it could be used for that with or without mac80211.
> 
> Do you have any idea where I can find 9.xx firmware? The latest
> firmware I can find for Orinoco PCMCIA Silver/Gold is 8.72.

It's in wl_lkm_718_abg.tar.gz, which was sadly taken offline by Agere.

I could find a copy here:
http://www.elcard.fi/Driver/wl_lkm_718_release.tar.gz.tar

The file is misnamed, it should be renamed to wl_lkm_718_abg.tar.gz

The firmware for Orinoco cards is in "firmware" directory.  It's version
9.48.  I believe it's RAM loadable and cannot be flashed permanently.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin