# IPW2200 (intel pro wireless 2200 drivers)

## tsunam

Guess what everyone .3 has been released and it's functional. You can all look to see if you can drop ndiswrapper for native drivers! You need a kernel greater then 2.6.3(2.6.4 minimum) apparently, and the short test they did of it before releasing it had 450KB/s reported.

Release 0.3 Features

------------ -----   -----       ----       ---       --         -     

This is the very first release with transmit and receive working.  This

is very new code (we only started sending/transmitting good packets a few

hours before writing this) and is sure to be full of some nasty bugs.

Some notable short coming of this drop are:

* WEP is not completely hooked up yet, so while you can associate with an

  encrypted AP, you won't be able to communiate (no DHCP, no data, etc.)

* We only associate using B band

* Limited wireless tools

* Only infrastructure mode works

* The statistics returned by iwconfig and /proc/net/wireless are mostly garbage

Go kill the Sourceforge mirrors  :Wink: 

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## Ecco

Utter sweetness. Now before we know it we'll have proper drivers in portage and we shall all be happy wireless piggies  :Very Happy: 

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## Insanity5902

Not trying to start a flame BUT

IMHO this is not functional.

Without having WEP (and assuming WPA) also, I dont' find this acceptable.  Working in the IT field, I would never set up a AP wihtout at least a WEP security in place.  The old 40-bit WEP sucked, the newer 128-bit is a lot better.  The best is WPA.  I wouldn't call this driver acceptable until they have at least 128-bit WEP working.

At my work, we have to run WPA through a vpn connection (or a vpn connection trhough WPA).  So truly this isn't even functional to me.  Though I hope the can get it soon, my next laptop is looking like it is going to have the 2200BG wireless connection.

Can't wait to see the progress of this b/c I have never like ndiswrapper for anything.

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## Ecco

There's no flame in there, but the simple truth  :Razz: 

But this driver isn't exciting for what it can or can't do. It's exciting because of where it's going. Soon we won't have to wrestle around with things like ndiswrapper anymore  :Smile: 

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## Insanity5902

i know and for that I am excited.

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## tsunam

Its far from functional for me as well, but ndiswrapper has never worked for me. thru various versions so I'm just patiently waiting for the next release. I just felt that if you are on campus where they do have open access points its worth using(which is why i grabbed it, school starts next week on campus after all, and I disliked having to boot windows just to hop online.)...or a neighbor who happens to let you borrow their wireless since they didn't turn on WAP security. *whistles*

Most people who use linux I'd hope would run wep at a minimum. It is true that it doesn't support that but it will in time. You also have to consider that they are doing this from scratch so even getting transfer to work on non wep working is a big step to getting wep working. So in reality its a big step for a linux native driver. If I could I'd love to help but unfortunately my background in programming is far from that required.

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## jewps

especially since this is backed by intel. their 2100b started off without wep and it took off in a few weeks. the development of the 2100b drivers seems to have halted at .51 for now, since it works pretty well, i'm happy. you have to apperciate intel for their rather impressive linux support, not to mention it's open source  :Wink: 

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## Ecco

If you have a 2200bg and you want to get the ndiswrapper to work I can tell you something from my own experience.

The card only gets detected properly from ndiswrapper 0.9. Just download it yourself from sourceforge. Do a make install and use the w22n51 drivers (the normal drivers from intel, you can get them from the link on the "supported hardware" page on the ndiswrapper site).

Just remember, the card does not get properly detected with ndiswrapper 0.8 or lower.

This worked like a charm for me, so maybe you'll give it another go  :Smile: 

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## asph

just emerged ipw2200, and just posting to say that now my wireless card works perfectly  :Smile: 

i don't need wep, since i use mac addresses to identify users on the wlan.. so the driver works great for me (finally i can use internet all over my house with my laptop  :Razz: )

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## GenKreton

 *Ecco wrote:*   

> If you have a 2200bg and you want to get the ndiswrapper to work I can tell you something from my own experience.
> 
> The card only gets detected properly from ndiswrapper 0.9. Just download it yourself from sourceforge. Do a make install and use the w22n51 drivers (the normal drivers from intel, you can get them from the link on the "supported hardware" page on the ndiswrapper site).
> 
> Just remember, the card does not get properly detected with ndiswrapper 0.8 or lower.
> ...

 

I have the 2200bg in my dell 600m and it has worked with ndiswrapper since I first tried it in 0.6.

With that said I've been on the IPW2100/2200 mailing list and a really excited this project is getting going finally. The main developer has been very busy ironing our some bugs in the 2100 but has finllay shifted focus.

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## GenKreton

0.4 is out with wep open auth (not shared) only among the list of changes.

Go intel!

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## Insanity5902

just fyi, wep isn't just to keep ppl from connecting to the AP but also to encrypt the data as it transfer from your comptuer to the AP b/c when it is in the air, it is fair game (and I think the law sees it as this also, if you don't protect your AP or the data, and it gets used, they can look it, just can't process it)

the .4 release is very intersting.  I have been looking at which minipci card to get for my laptop.  I can get teh 2200BG for about 40 bucks, or a netgate one (which has supperior perfomance) for about 90 bucks .... what to do.

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## tsunam

Anyone else having some issues with the ipw2200-.4-r1. I'm getting a abnormally high cpu use from it. I'll do a ifconfig eth1 up and it'll shoot right 100% and stay there til i force it it reload/unload. Once I do that the cpu will return to 0-4% used. I'm just wondering if its just me getting this.

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## logics

 *Quote:*   

> Anyone else having some issues with the ipw2200-.4-r1. I'm getting a abnormally high cpu use from it. I'll do a ifconfig eth1 up and it'll shoot right 100% and stay there til i force it it reload/unload. Once I do that the cpu will return to 0-4% used. I'm just wondering if its just me getting this.

 

Are you seeing any message storms to your kernel log when the CPU is being pegged?  We haven't had any reports of this problem with 0.3 or 0.4 -- although we used to have the problem with 0.2.

If you run `ps` while the CPU is pegged, what does it report as consuming the system?

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## Ecco

Weird, I seem to be unable to load the driver properly. I haven't tried the pervious ones since they're not really usable anyway.

I certainly do have an Intel 2200 BG, and it works with ndiswrapper:

```
vaio linux # lspci | grep Network

0000:02:02.0 Network controller: Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)
```

After I do "modprobe ipw2200" the kernel tells me this:

```
ieee80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'

ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200 Network Driver, 0.4

ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2004 Intel Corporation

PCI: Enabling device 0000:02:02.0 (0000 -> 0002)

ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:02:02.0[A] -> GSI 7 (level, low) -> IRQ 7

PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:02:02.0 to 64

ipw2200: Unable to load ucode

ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: 0xFFFFFFFF

ipw2200: failed to register network device

```

So firmware_class is certainly loaded.

"lsmod" shows me that (amongst others) the following modules are loaded:

```
Module                  Size  Used by

ipw2200                93028  0

firmware_class          7488  1 ipw2200

ieee80211              12100  1 ipw2200

ieee80211_crypt         4356  1 ieee80211
```

I use mm-sources 2.6.8.1-r3 and gcc3.4, could it have to to with either of those?

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## dyqik

I've posted a howto of how I got my ipw2200 to work with version 0.5 of the ipw2200 drivers, and 2.6.8-gentoo-r1 at https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=217688

Some of you might find it useful, and others might be able to improve on it.

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## Insanity5902

On the sourceforge site for the 2200 card, they mention intel is coming out with a 2915, that is a a/b/g which is the 2200 card with a specs on it.

I am about to buy a laptop and would like the 2915 card instead of the 2200 card, they say the 2200 drivers will work on the 2915 card, and eveantualy the driver name will change to reflect that.

As anyone seen the 2915 card for sell.  I have tried searching around for a bit  and didn't find anything intresting?

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## logics

From an article on The Register:

 *Quote:*   

> The new adaptors will be introduced next month, with availability improving through the remainder of Q3 and into Q4, the chip giant said. 

 

You can read the whole article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/27/intel_802-11a/

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## Insanity5902

damnit, i wonder if i can wait a month  :Razz: 

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## Ecco

Just a shameless *bump* to see if anyone has any idea about my firmware problem...

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## Insanity5902

Ecco, check out this thread, there as been a lot of development of these drivers in the past 2 wks. 

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=217688&highlight=

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## Ecco

 *Insanity5902 wrote:*   

> Ecco, check out this thread, there as been a lot of development of these drivers in the past 2 wks. 
> 
> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=217688&highlight=

 

Thanks, I'll go check if they can think of anything there.

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## the_enigma

Ecco:  Make sure you aren't loading ndiswrapper beforehand.  Even if you load and then unload the ndiswrapper module, it probably will break ipw2200.  It does something to the firmware upload thing, I'm not sure what.

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## Ecco

 *the_enigma wrote:*   

> Ecco:  Make sure you aren't loading ndiswrapper beforehand.  Even if you load and then unload the ndiswrapper module, it probably will break ipw2200.  It does something to the firmware upload thing, I'm not sure what.

 

Thanks, I found out the same several days ago myself, so now I have everything working perfectly, even wep  :Very Happy: 

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