RUM(4) - Device Drivers Manual #

RUM(4) - Device Drivers Manual

NAME #

rum - Ralink Technology/MediaTek USB IEEE 802.11a/b/g wireless network device

SYNOPSIS #

rum* at uhub? port ?

DESCRIPTION #

The rum driver supports USB 2.0 and PCI Express Mini Card wireless adapters based on the Ralink RT2501USB and RT2601USB chipsets.

Ralink PCI Express Mini Card adapters show up as normal USB 2.0 devices and are thus handled by the rum driver.

The RT2501USB chipset is the second generation of 802.11a/b/g adapters from Ralink. It consists of two integrated chips, an RT2571W MAC/BBP and an RT2528 or RT5226 radio transceiver.

The RT2601USB chipset consists of two integrated chips, an RT2671 MAC/BBP and an RT2527 or RT5225 radio transceiver. This chipset uses the MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) technology with multiple antennas to extend the operating range of the adapter and to achieve higher throughput.

These are the modes the rum driver can operate in:

BSS mode

Also known as infrastructure mode, this is used when associating with an access point, through which all traffic passes. This mode is the default.

IBSS mode

Also known as IEEE ad-hoc mode or peer-to-peer mode. This is the standardized method of operating without an access point. Stations associate with a service set. However, actual connections between stations are peer-to-peer.

Host AP

In this mode the driver acts as an access point (base station) for other cards.

monitor mode

In this mode the driver is able to receive packets without associating with an access point. This disables the internal receive filter and enables the card to capture packets from networks which it wouldn’t normally have access to, or to scan for access points.

The rum driver can be configured to use Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA1 and WPA2). WPA2 is the current encryption standard for wireless networks. It is strongly recommended that neither WEP nor WPA1 are used as the sole mechanism to secure wireless communication, due to serious weaknesses. WPA1 is disabled by default and may be enabled using the option “wpaprotos wpa1,wpa2”. For standard WPA networks which use pre-shared keys (PSK), keys are configured using the “wpakey” option. WPA-Enterprise networks require use of the wpa_supplicant package. The rum driver relies on the software 802.11 stack for both encryption and decryption of data frames.

The rum driver can be configured at runtime with ifconfig(8) or on boot with hostname.if(5).

FILES #

The following firmware file is loaded when an interface is brought up:

/etc/firmware/rum-rt2573

HARDWARE #

The following adapters should work:

3Com Aolynk WUB320g

Abocom WUG2700

Airlink101 AWLL5025

ASUS WL-167g ver 2

Atlantis Land A02-UP1-W54

Belkin F5D7050 ver 3

Belkin F5D9050 ver 3

Belkin F5D9050C

Buffalo WLI-U2-SG54HG

Buffalo WLI-U2-SG54HP

Buffalo WLI-U2-G54HP

CNet CWD-854 ver F

Conceptronic C54RU ver 2

Corega CG-WLUSB2GL

Corega CG-WLUSB2GO

Corega CG-WLUSB2GPX

D-Link DWA-110

D-Link DWA-111

D-Link DWL-G122 rev C1

D-Link WUA-1340

Digitus DN-7003GR

Edimax EW-7318Ug

Edimax EW-7318USg

Edimax EW-7618Ug

Gigabyte GN-WB01GS

Gigabyte GN-WI05GS

Hawking HWUG1

Hawking HWU54DM

Hercules HWGUSB2-54-LB

Hercules HWGUSB2-54V2-AP

LevelOne WNC-0301USB v3

Linksys WUSB200

Linksys WUSB54G rev C

Linksys WUSB54GR

Planex GW-US54HP

Planex GW-US54Mini2

Planex GW-USMM

Senao NUB-3701

Sitecom WL-113 ver 2

Sitecom WL-172

Sweex LW053

TP-LINK TL-WN321G

EXAMPLES #

The following example scans for available networks:

# ifconfig rum0 scan

The following hostname.if(5) example configures rum0 to join network “mynwid”, using WPA key “mywpakey”, obtaining an IP address using DHCP:

nwid mynwid wpakey mywpakey
inet autoconf

The following hostname.if(5) example creates a host-based access point on boot:

mediaopt hostap
nwid mynwid wpakey mywpakey
inet 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0

DIAGNOSTICS #

rum0: error N, could not read firmware … For some reason, the driver was unable to read the microcode file from the filesystem. The file might be missing or corrupted.

rum0: could not load 8051 microcode An error occurred while attempting to upload the microcode to the onboard 8051 microcontroller unit.

rum0: 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.

HISTORY #

The rum driver first appeared in OpenBSD 4.0.

AUTHORS #

The rum driver was written by Niall O’Higgins <niallo@openbsd.org> and
Damien Bergamini <damien.bergamini@free.fr>.

CAVEATS #

The rum driver supports automatic control of the transmit speed in BSS mode only. Therefore the use of a rum adapter in Host AP mode is discouraged.

This driver does not support powersave mode.

OpenBSD 7.5 - October 15, 2021