NAME

       an — Aironet Communications 4500/4800 wireless network adapter driver

SYNOPSIS

       To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

             device an
             device wlan

       Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):

             if_an_load="YES"

DEPRECATION NOTICE

       This driver is scheduled for removal prior to the release of FreeBSD 13.0

DESCRIPTION

       The  an  driver  provides  support for Aironet Communications 4500 and 4800 wireless network adapters and
       variants, including the following:

             •   Aironet Communications 4500 and 4800 series
             •   Cisco Aironet 340 and 350 series
             •   Xircom Wireless Ethernet Adapter

       Support for these devices include the ISA, PCI and PCMCIA varieties.  The Aironet  4500  series  adapters
       operate  at  1  and  2Mbps  while the Aironet 4800 series and Cisco adapters can operate at 1, 2, 5.5 and
       11Mbps.  The ISA, PCI and PCMCIA devices are all based on the same core PCMCIA modules and all  have  the
       same programming interface, however unlike the Lucent WaveLAN/IEEE cards, the ISA and PCI cards appear to
       the host as normal ISA and PCI devices and do not require any PCCARD support.

       The  PCMCIA  Aironet cards require PC Card support, including the kernel pccard(4) driver.  ISA cards can
       either be configured to use ISA Plug and Play or to use a particular I/O  address  and  IRQ  by  properly
       setting the DIP switches on the board.  (The default switch setting is for Plug and Play.)  The an driver
       has  Plug  and  Play  support  and will work in either configuration, however when using a hard-wired I/O
       address and IRQ, the driver configuration and the NIC's switch settings must agree.  PCI cards require no
       switch settings of any kind and will be automatically probed and attached.

       All host/device interaction with the Aironet cards is via programmed I/O.  The  Aironet  devices  support
       802.11  and  802.3 frames, power management, BSS (infrastructure) and IBSS (ad-hoc) operation modes.  The
       an driver encapsulates all IP and ARP traffic as 802.11 frames, however it can receive either  802.11  or
       802.3  frames.   Transmit  speed  is  selectable between 1Mbps, 2Mbps, 5.5Mbps, 11Mbps or "auto" (the NIC
       automatically chooses the best speed).

       By default, the an driver configures the Aironet card for infrastructure operation.

       For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

DIAGNOSTICS

       an%d: init failed  The Aironet card failed to become ready after an initialization command was issued.

       an%d: failed to allocate %d bytes on NIC  The driver was unable to allocate memory for transmit frames in
       the NIC's on-board RAM.

       an%d: device timeout  The Aironet card failed to generate an interrupt to acknowledge a transmit command.

SEE ALSO

       altq(4), arp(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), wlan(4), ancontrol(8), ifconfig(8)

HISTORY

       The an device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 4.0.

AUTHORS

       The an driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@ee.columbia.edu>.

Debian                                            July 16, 2005                                            AN(4)