2.2 Configuring the PCMCIA 802.11b cards

We use in our testbed Lucent Technologies and Compaq cards. All the cards have the Lucent chip.

In order to configure the wireless cards, you can configure the cards in Managed mode or in Ad Hoc mode. The last mode is the mode we use for communicate the Mobile Host with the Base Stations.

To configure the wireless cards we need to install the PCMCIA package. You can get it from this web page. You should use make config, make all and make install to install the package in your PC.

This package contains some drivers to use with the Lucent and the Compaq cards (like wvlan and orinoco). We use the orinoco driver because it is newer.

You should also install the wireless tools package. This package offers some tools to configure the cards easily.

To configure the cards in the Ad-Hoc mode, we need to edit the /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts file. This file includes several sections for configuring your wireless card. You need to look at the MAC address in your wireless cards and associate an entry for this MAC address with the appropiated driver. For example, our wireless cards have MAC address like *:*:*:00:60:1D:*, *:*:*:00:02:2D:* and *:*:*:00:02:A5:*, so in the /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts file there is an entry like this:

	# Lucent Wavelan IEEE
	# Note : wvlan_cs driver only, and version 1.0.4+ for encryption support
	*,*,*,00:60:1D:*|*,*,*,00:02:2D:*|*,*,*,00:02:A5:*)
	    INFO="Wavelan IEEE example (Lucent default settings)"
	    ESSID="MINIRED"
	    MODE="Ad-Hoc"
	    RATE="auto"

The ESSID field specifies the network identifier. All the cards with this identifier can establish an Ad Hoc network when they are configured in Ad Hoc mode.

To load the driver you have to restart the PCMCIA services with:

/etc/init.d/pcmcia restart