Precision Technology Services

Wireless Network Adventures under FreeBSD v6.x :

What follows below are my continuing notes and experiences in regards to setting up wireless networking under FreeBSD v6.x. The hardware installation and testing performed below were all attempted using FreeBSD v6.1.

Atheros 802.11b/g (AR5212A) MiniPCI adapter

Model # : AR5212A

The Atheros AR5212A MiniPCI card was originally added to my notebook computer for use under Windows XP, and it does an excellent job. Recently when adding FreeBSD 6.1 to the system, I attempted to get the Atheros wireless card running. The card is supported by FreeBSD's native ath driver.

A few steps are required to get the card running. The ath driver requires that the following lines be added to the kernel configuration file :

device ath
device ath_hal
device ath_rate_sample

After adding those lines and recompiling my kernel, the following output was noted upon rebooting in the dmesg output :

ath0: mem 0x80110000-0x8011ffff irq 11 at device 12.0 on pci0
ath0: Ethernet address: 00:02:8a:b6:08:be
ath0: mac 5.6 phy 4.1 5ghz radio 1.7 2ghz radio 2.3