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ar9170

ar9170usb is a GPL driver for the Atheros 802.11n USB chipset (AR9170).

See also otus, the driver which ar9170 is based on.

caveats

Before you can use the hardware, you have to get the the right firmware.

device driver

ar9170 will be part of the 2.6.31 kernel release but new updates (such as AVM Fritz support, and support for the one stage open source firmware) will be available until 2.6.32. You can however get the latest ar9170 driver, as targeted in the wireless-testing development tree by using git to get wireless-testing directly or by using the compat-wireless tarball which will get you only the wireless drivers.

open firmware

Firmware is open! Go check the ar9170.fw page.

official device firmware

You have to pick the right one, download and put it into the right place. Normally this should be /lib/firmware. However some distributions put firmware in a different place.

• one stage: adds support for AVM FRITZ!WLAN USB Stick N and AVM FRITZ!WLAN USB Stick 2.4

  • Download ar9170.fw and put it into the right place.

    firmware checksums
    filename	md5sum
    ar9170.fw	34feec4ec0eae3bb92c7c1ea2dfb4530

• two stage: legacy firmware

  • The firmware files are included in the firmware tree.

    Download ar9170-1.fw, ar9170-2.fw and put them into the right place.

    firmware checksums
    filename	md5sum
    ar9170-1.fw	bebf8de7bf0aa8ae3eb395cc6be2e762
    ar9170-2.fw	33ae4899340c75be4bc80c34fbe5d171

available devices

features

• 802.11abgn/bgn (depending on hardware)
• 1 or 2 spatial streams for 802.11n (depending on hardware)

working

• 802.11 a/b/g
• Ad-hoc, monitor and station mode
• Cryptographic accelerator in station mode
• SoftLEDs

not working yet

• Cryptographic accelerator in Ad-hoc mode
• Adaptive Noise Immunity
• Lots of other things

Sharing code between drivers

ar9170 makes use of ath.ko module for help with regulatory.