Atheros Releases 802.11n Linux Driver

Last September we reported that MadWiFi was abandoning their proprietary HAL and really the driver itself for that matter. The developers behind the popular MadWiFi Linux driver were ceasing work on it in favor of starting up a new driver called ath5k using OpenHAL. Two of the key developers were also hired by Atheros, the wireless chipset company itself. Through these recent improvements, Atheros has went from a company being criticized for their lack of Linux support to one with impecable possibilities.

Most of the Atheros excitement had been happening in the 802.11g realm, but the 802.11n Linux support for WiFi has received a big boost. Atheros had announced the release of the ath9k driver. The ath9k driver currently lacks access point support, but it's coming and as a whole this driver seems to be fairly complete. The 802.11n Atheros products supported by this new WiFi driver are the AR5418+AR5133, AR5416+AR5133, AR5416+AR2133, AR9160, AR9280, and AR9281 ASICs. This driver is open-source and Atheros is targeting it for integration into the Linux kernel.

The ath9k release announcement can be read at the MadWifi website while the driver source-code and other pertinent information can be obtained from Wireless.Kernel.org.