Intersil's station firmware for Prism2 chipset supports a so called Host AP mode in which the firmware takes care of time critical tasks like beacon sending and frame acknowledging, but leaves other management tasks to host computer driver. This driver implements basic functionality needed to initialize and configure Prism2-based cards, to send and receive frames, and to gather statistics. In addition, it includes an implementation of following IEEE 802.11 functions: authentication (and deauthentication), association (reassociation, and disassociation), data transmission between two wireless stations, power saving (PS) mode signaling and frame buffering for PS stations. The driver has also various features for development debugging and for researching IEEE 802.11 environments like access to hardware configuration records, I/O registers, and frames with 802.11 headers.
When used with a user space daemon, the combination of the Host AP driver and hostapd daemon includes additional features. These include support for IEEE 802.1X and dynamic WEP rekeying, RADIUS Accounting, RADIUS-based ACL for IEEE 802.11 authentication, minimal IAPP (IEEE 802.11f).
Linux Wireless LAN Howto has some useful information about wireless LAN support in Linux. In addition, it includes information about which cards are Prism2-based (and can thus be used in Host AP mode).
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation. See COPYING for more details.
Please see README.prism2 for updated documentation of the driver. Please also check FAQ before sending problem reports.
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