URAL(4) - Device Drivers Manual #

URAL(4) - Device Drivers Manual

NAME #

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

SYNOPSIS #

ural* at uhub? port ?

DESCRIPTION #

The ural driver supports USB 2.0 wireless adapters based on the Ralink RT2500USB chipset.

The RT2500USB chipset is the first generation of 802.11b/g adapters from Ralink. It consists of two integrated chips, an RT2570 MAC/BBP and an RT2526 radio transceiver.

These are the modes the ural 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 ural 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 ural driver relies on the software 802.11 stack for both encryption and decryption of data frames.

The transmit speed is user-selectable or can be adapted automatically by the driver depending on the number of hardware transmission retries.

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

HARDWARE #

The following adapters should work:

AMIT WL532U

ASUS WL-167g v1

Belkin F5D7050 v2000

Buffalo WLI-U2-KG54

Buffalo WLI-U2-KG54-AI

Buffalo WLI-U2-KG54-YB

CNet CWD-854

Compex WLU54G 2A1100

Conceptronic C54RU

D-Link DWL-G122 (b1)

Dynalink WLG25USB

E-Tech WGUS02

Eminent EM3035

Gigabyte GN-WBKG

Hercules HWGUSB2-54

KCORP LifeStyle KLS-685

Linksys HU200-TS

Linksys WUSB54G v4

Linksys WUSB54GP v4

MSI MS-6861

MSI MS-6865

MSI MS-6869

Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector

Nova Tech NV-902W

OvisLink Evo-W54USB

SerComm UB801R

SparkLAN WL-685R

Sphairon UB801R

Surecom EP-9001-g rev 3A

Sweex LC100060

Tonze UW-6200C

Zaapa ZNWUSB-54

Zinwell ZPlus-G250

Zinwell ZWX-G261

Zonet ZEW2500P

EXAMPLES #

The following example scans for available networks:

# ifconfig ural0 scan

The following hostname.if(5) example configures ural0 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 #

ural0: 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 ural driver first appeared in OpenBSD 3.7.

AUTHORS #

The ural driver was written by Damien Bergamini <damien.bergamini@free.fr>.

CAVEATS #

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

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

OpenBSD 7.5 - October 15, 2021