docs/99551: The Handbook erroneously advises that a wireless card with a Prism chipset is required for Access Point operation

[Nick Withers]

>Number:         99551
>Category:       docs
>Synopsis:       The Handbook erroneously advises that a wireless card with a Prism chipset is required for Access Point operation
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-doc
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Tue Jun 27 13:50:19 GMT 2006
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Nick Withers
>Release:        6.1-RELEASE
>Organization:
>Environment:
FreeBSD shmick.shmon.net 6.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE #1: Tue Jun 20 16:56:09 EST 2006     nick at shmick.shmon.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SHMICK  i386
>Description:
The FreeBSD Handbook advises in the "Wireless Networking" chapter ("http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-wireless.html") that "In order to set up a wireless access point with FreeBSD, you need to have a compatible wireless card. Currently, only cards with the Prism chipset are supported".

However, any supported card can be used (confirmed by Sam Leffler).

All the cards based on the Prism chipset listed as supported in wi(4)'s man page are rather old, with none supporting 802.11g and all increasingly difficult to procure. Updating the documentation to reflect the truth would better communicate FreeBSD's current potential in the wireless arena and potentially avoid sending readers on quests to find old, essentially outdated hardware.

>How-To-Repeat:

>Fix:
I was going to attempt to produce a diff to "doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/advanced-networking/chapter.sgml" to update the page, but really don't think I have enough knowledge of the subject matter to do so with any great confidence in the results.

The whole wireless networking section could do with a bit of TLC, really, and "http://www.freebsdmall.com/~loader/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/wireless/article.html" appears to be a giant leap in the right direction. 

>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: