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Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 13:32:00 +0200
From: Roman Naumann <namor@hemio.de>
To: freebsd-wireless@FreeBSD.org
Subject: State of ath(4) Driver
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Hello list members!

I plan to buy a ath(4) supported wlan card.

unfortunately, the man page seems out of date by several years.
It fails to mention chips newer than AR5416 and does not explain whether
40mhz channel width is supported (and some other features).

Other information found on the internet says:

https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2011-07-2011-09.html:
"AR5416, AR9160, and AR9280 functions in both station and hostap mode. Performance is good."
but: "open task: Correct handling of 20<->20/40mhz transitions (without dropping frames)"

http://adrianchadd.blogspot.de/2012/06/dont-let-anyone-tell-you-that-freebsd.html:
The output of "athstats" indicates that 40mhz works, but I dont know how good and if there are the aforementioned packet losses when switching modes.

Long story short:

What is the status of the ath(4) driver, in particular regarding:

-> 802.11{a,g}n
-> multiple hostap virtual interfaces (man page "[yes,] on cards that use a 5212 part)
-> WPA (man page says "WPA is not supported for 5210 parts")
-> use of 5ghz band
-> dualband (2.4ghz and 5ghz at same time)
-> 40mhz channel width
-> supported chipsets (newer than AR5416)

Also, are there any issues (in general or with some chips) which
users should know about before buying one?

Is there another place where documentation can be found which I failed to find?

Regards,
Roman Naumann