rtl8180-sa2400 Linux kernel driver Released under the terms of GNU General Public Licence (GPL) Copyright(c) Andrea Merello - 2004,2005 Portions of this driver are based on Intel Pro Wireless 2100 driver. Thanks to the original author !! Most notabily the ieee802.11 stack is imported from this project, altought I've modified it ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is an attempt to write somethig that can make my rtl8180-based wlan card work under Linux (using only opensource stuff). It's in early development stage so don't expect too much from it (also use it at your own risk!) This should be considered just a fragment of code.. using it on your(any) system is at your own risk! Please note that I never supported the idea to use it in any way, so i cannot be considered responsible in any way for anything deriving by it usage. Anyway for now we have monitor mode and managed mode basically working! This isn't necessary stable, but seems to work.. Also since v 0.16 we have an initial and incomplete support for ad-hoc mode. *Please* see README.adhoc for further details An official driver from Realtek exist for this NIC but - It's mainly closed source stuff - It doesn't work on 2.6 kernels (and on some 2.4) - It hasn't any support for monitor mode I have it working with ndiswrapper, but since I don't like to use windows' closed source drv I decided to try to write this driver. *!!Please note that only cards with a PHILIPS sa2400 or MAXIM or GCT RF chip are supported.!!* Support for such a radio chip is also still experimental. There are some variant of the card with rtl8180 and philips sa2400 RF: antenna diversity, firdac etc.. Altought all configurations should be supported, some are not tested and might fail. If you decide to test this drv on a digital-phy card, please let me know the results. This driver is still under development and very far from perfect. It should work on x86, and someone reported success on PPC, while on amd64 I have some success and some failure report. Other archs are untested.. I think there is still work to do about this. If you decide to try it anyway (at your own risk!) and you want report me success/insuccess I will apreciate it very much. To compile the driver simply run make. Note that the Makefile should work on kenrel 2.6 and 2.4. Anyway the old Makefile for 2.6 kernel is still included as Makefile26. FOUR modules will be compiled: the ieee802.11 stack (3 modules) and the driver itself. You need to insmod ALL of them! Some versions might work also on recent 2.4 kernel. After insmod'ing ieee80211-r8180_crypt-r8180 ieee80211_crypt_wep-r8180 ieee80211-r8180.ko and r8180 the nic is sleeping. To wake up the nic run: ifconfig <ifacename> up (where <ifacename> is your network device for wlan card). Please note that the default interface name is wlanX. If you would like to set the interface name to something else you may use the 'devname=' module parameter. For example: insmod r8180.ko ifname=eth%d will set the interface name of this device to something like eth0. Once the nic is up it can be put in a monitor mode by running: iwconfig <ifacename> mode monitor and channel number may be changed by running: iwconfig <ifacename> channel XX Monitor mode is also accessible via iwpriv, so Kismet works (altought channel change routines are still a bit slow so channel hopping may not work perfectly). In monitor mode a choice may be made via iwpriv if the nic should pass packets with bad crc or drop them. To put the nic in managed mode run: iwconfig <ifacename> mode managed In managed mode there is support for iwlist scan that should report the currently available networks. Please note that in managed mode channels cannot be changed manually. To associate with a network iwconfig <ifacename> essid XXXXX where XXXXX is the network essid (name) reported by 'iwlist scan'. Please note that essid is case sensitive. If your network is not broadcasting the ESSID, then you need to specify *also* the AP MAC address iwconfig <ifacename> ap XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX The driver accepts another boolean parameter: hwseqnum If set to 1 it lets the card HW take care of the sequence number of the TXed frames. Altought in managed mode I can't see an important reason to use HW to do that, when we'll start to TX beacons in master (AP) and ad-hoc modes most probably it will be extremely useful (since most probably we will use two HW queues). I'm unsure if it will work correctly on all NICs.. reports are *VERY, VERY* apreciated.. WEP === Since v 0.8 WEP encryption should be supported (tested with 104 bit keys). Wep encryption is done by host, not by the nic. Key can be set with: Key can be set with iwconfig <ifacename> key 12345... WEP is supported via software thanks to the ipw stack. I've found some register for nic HW wep encryption, but some nic in truth seems to don't support it at all. Anyway some code to use HW wep is present and available by a module param, but most probably it is buggy even in cards that have HW wep. IWPRIV ====== This driver supports some private handlers The monitor private handler is quite redundant (it is possible to do the same with iwconfig) but it is keept to make sure kismet work (setting 'Orinoco' as source type) then are present the following option -badcrc: let you choose to kill or to pass to the upper layer frames with bad crc in monitor mode -forceassoc: if 1 the driver will not perform normal authentication+association procedure, but just belive to be successfully associated in monitor mode.. just for your fun -beaconint: set the beacon interval for ad-hoc/master mode. It is quite untested for now... -prismhdr: if 1 in monitor mode the driver will prefix a prism header to the ieee802.11 packet -activescan: if 0 the driver will avoid to send probe requests, sanning will be only on beacon basis If you have some question/comments please feel free to write me.Download Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
Otherwise, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Device Manager.
Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
For more help, visit our Driver Support section for step-by-step videos on how to install drivers for every file type.