Topics
Modified on December 22, 2005

This software is provided at no charge. If you want to help to enhance this driver and to support more hardware you can make a donation using Paypal. Thank you.

Introduction

This driver manages the wireless network adapters based on the Ralink RT2500 chipset following the IEEE 802.11g standard.
It is developed with a Sitecom WL-115 PCI card and a Sitecom WL-112 Cardbus adapter.
The network environment is a Linksys WRT54G wireless router and an ADSL Internet access.
The most recent version from December 22, 2005 is rt25xx-0.0.6-x86.
The german translation of the documentation supplied with the driver is done by Andre Stark.

Features

The driver allows the network card to act as a station of a BSS linked to an access point and in monitor mode.
The WEP is managed with keys of 40 or 104 bits for a global level of protection of 64 or 128 bits.

Device support

PCI
The PCI identifiers of the supported devices are presented in the next table.

IdentifiersNameComment
1814:0201Ralink RT2500 802.11bg WLAN PCI

Cardbus
The Cardbus identifiers of the supported devices are presented in the next table.

IdentifiersNameComment
1814:0201Ralink RT2500 802.11bg WLAN Cardbus PC card

Disclaimer

This driver is copyrighted © 2005 by Patrick Lafarguette. All Rights Reserved.
Some portions of code are copyrighted © by Be Incorporated.
No warranty.
Use at your own risk.

Installation

There is no need to install the add-on for using the driver with BONE.

PCI

  1. Open the driver folder. Drag the file rt25xx in the folder named drop driver here.
  2. Create a link in the folder /boot/home/config/add-ons/kernel/drivers/dev/net to the driver named /boot/home/config/add-ons/kernel/drivers/bin/rt25xx.
  3. Go to parent folder.
  4. Open the add-on folder. Drag the file rt25xx in the folder named drop add-on here.
  5. Go to parent folder.
  6. Open the configuration folder. Drag the file rt25xx in the folder named drop configuration file here.
  7. Reboot. After reboot, you will see a new device in the Network preferences panel.
  8. Setup your device and restart networking.

Cardbus

The driver needs the cb_enabler module located in the /boot/beos/system/add-ons/kernel/bus_managers folder.
This module can be found in the Cardbus Modem Driver file.

  1. Open the driver folder. Drag the file rt25xx_cb in the folder named drop driver here.
  2. Create a link in the folder /boot/home/config/add-ons/kernel/drivers/dev/net to the driver named /boot/home/config/add-ons/kernel/drivers/bin/rt25xx_cb.
  3. Go to parent folder.
  4. Open the add-on folder. Drag the file rt25xx_cb in the folder named drop add-on here.
  5. Go to parent folder.
  6. Open the configuration folder. Drag the file rt25xx_cb in the folder named drop configuration file here.
  7. Reboot. After reboot, you will see a new device in the Network preferences panel.
  8. Setup your device and restart networking.

Configuration

The configuration file is used to specify the wireless settings. The different parameters are presented in the next table.

ParameterDescription
mode Specify the kind of the wireless network
0 for an IBSS, peer to peer network
1 for a BSS, infrastructure network with an access point
2 for monitor mode
The default value is 1
Warning: in monitor mode, the device must be disabled in the Network preferences panel and be used only with the application BeNetworkCapture
channel Specify the radio channel to use
Possible values are from 1 to 14 according to the adapter used
ssid Specify the name of the network to join or create
Up to 32 characters
If this value is not specified in BSS mode, the adapter can join all the existing networks
privacy Specify if the frames are encrypted
0 disables privacy
1 enables WEP 64 bits
2 enables WEP 128 bits
The default value is 0
authentication Specify the authentication type
0 open system authentication
1 shared key authentication (requires WEP)
The default value is 0
format Specify the WEP keys format
0 ASCII
1 hexadecimal string
The default value is 0
key0
key1
key2
key3		 Define the keys associated with WEP
A key is a succession of 5 or 13 ASCII characters or 10 or 26 hexadecimal characters according to the selected format and level of privacy

History

The different published versions of the driver are presented in the next table.

VersionDateDetails
0.0.6 12/25/2005 Monitor mode support
0.0.5 11/05/2005 Cardbus device support
Hardware WEP support for privacy. Keys of 40 and 104 bits are managed
Software WEP support for shared key authentication
0.0.4 09/11/2005 First public release
Basic support
Only BSS without privacy
Channel and ssid must be set and refer to a valid BSS