ral(4)

NAME

ral – Ralink Technology IEEE 802.11a/g/n wireless network driver

SYNOPSIS

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

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

if_ral_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

The ral driver supports PCI/PCIe/CardBus wireless adapters based on the Ralink RT2500, RT2501, RT2600, RT2700, RT2800, RT3090 and RT3900E chipsets.

The RT2500 chipset is the first generation of 802.11b/g adapters from Ralink. It consists of two integrated chips, an RT2560 MAC/BBP and an RT2525 radio transceiver.

The RT2501 chipset is the second generation of 802.11a/b/g adapters from Ralink. It consists of two integrated chips, an RT2561 MAC/BBP and an RT2527 radio transceiver. This chipset provides support for the IEEE 802.11e standard with multiple hardware transmission queues and allows scatter/gather for efficient DMA operations.

The RT2600 chipset consists of two integrated chips, an RT2661 MAC/BBP and an RT2529 radio transceiver. This chipset uses the MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) technology with multiple radio transceivers to extend the operating range of the adapter and to achieve higher throughput. However, the RT2600 chipset does not support any of the 802.11n features.

The RT2700 chipset is a low-cost version of the RT2800 chipset. It supports a single transmit path and two receiver paths (1T2R). It consists of two integrated chips, an RT2760 or RT2790 (PCIe) MAC/BBP and an RT2720 (2.4GHz) or RT2750 (2.4GHz/5GHz) radio transceiver.

The RT2800 chipset is the first generation of 802.11n adapters from Ralink. It consists of two integrated chips, an RT2860 or RT2890 (PCIe) MAC/BBP and an RT2820 (2.4GHz) or RT2850 (2.4GHz/5GHz) radio transceiver. The RT2800 chipset supports two transmit paths and up to three receiver paths (2T2R/2T3R). It can achieve speeds up to 144Mbps (20MHz bandwidth) and 300Mbps (40MHz bandwidth.)

The RT3090 chipset is the first generation of single-chip 802.11n adapters from Ralink. ral supports station, adhoc, hostap, mesh, wds, and monitor mode operation. Only one hostap or mesh virtual interface may be configured at a time. Any number of wds virtual interfaces may be configured together with a hostap interface. Multiple station interfaces may be operated together with a hostap interface to construct a wireless repeater device.

The RT3900E chipset is a single-chip 802.11n adapters from Ralink. The MAC/Baseband Processor can be an RT5390 or RT5392. The RT5390 chip operates in the 2GHz spectrum and supports 1 transmit path and 1 receiver path (1T1R). The RT5392 chip operates in the 2GHz spectrum and supports up to 2 transmit paths and 2 receiver paths (2T2R).

The transmit speed is user-selectable or can be adapted automatically by the driver depending on the number of hardware transmission retries. For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

HARDWARE

The ral driver supports PCI/PCIe/CardBus wireless adapters based on Ralink Technology chipsets, including:

EXAMPLES

Join an existing BSS network (i.e., connect to an access point):

ifconfig wlan create wlandev ral0 inet 192.0.2.20/24

Join a specific BSS network with network name my_net:

ifconfig wlan create wlandev ral0 inet 192.0.2.20/24 \
    ssid my_net

Join a specific BSS network with 40-bit WEP encryption:

ifconfig wlan create wlandev ral0 inet 192.0.2.20/24 \
    ssid my_net wepmode on wepkey 0x1234567890 weptxkey 1

Join a specific BSS network with 104-bit WEP encryption:

ifconfig wlan create wlandev ral0 inet 192.0.2.20/24 \
    ssid my_net \
    wepmode on wepkey 0x01020304050607080910111213 weptxkey 1

DIAGNOSTICS

ral%d: could not load 8051 microcode

An error occurred while attempting to upload the microcode to the onboard 8051 microcontroller unit.

ral%d: timeout waiting for MCU to initialize

The onboard 8051 microcontroller unit failed to initialize in time.

ral%d: device timeout

A frame dispatched to the hardware for transmission did not complete in time. The driver will reset the hardware. This should not happen.

SEE ALSO

cardbus(4), intro(4), wlan(4), wlan_ccmp(4), wlan_tkip(4), wlan_wep(4), wlan_xauth(4), networking(7), hostapd(8), ifconfig(8), wpa_supplicant(8)

HISTORY

The ral driver first appeared in OpenBSD 3.7. Support for the RT2501 and RT2600 chipsets was added in OpenBSD 3.9. Support for the RT2800 chipset was added in OpenBSD 4.3. Support for the RT2700 chipset was added in OpenBSD 4.4. Support for the RT3090 chipset was added in OpenBSD 4.9.

AUTHORS

The original ral driver was written by Damien Bergamini ⟨[email protected]⟩.

CAVEATS

The ral driver does not make use of the hardware cryptographic engine.

The ral driver does not support any of the 802.11n capabilities offered by the RT2700 and RT2800 chipsets. Additional work is required in before those features can be supported.

Host AP mode does not support power saving. Clients attempting to use power saving mode may experience significant packet loss (disabling power saving on the client will fix this).

Some PCI ral adapters strictly require a system supporting PCI 2.2 or greater. Check the board's PCI version before purchasing the card as it is likely these adapters will not work in systems based on older revisions of the PCI specification.