I've seen that happen with git.

git "encourages" developers to share often. It doesn't mean that they will.

The 802.11ac spec lets you do that.

You can use 40, 80, 80+80 or 160. Right now I think everything is shipping 80 only, but I could be wrong. But the chip is allowed to transmit on whichever channel is free. If the primary 20MHz channel is free, it transmits on that. If the Primary and Extension 20Mhz channel are both free (ie, the "HT40" channel in 802.11n parlance) it transmits on that. If all 80MHz is free, it transmits on that.

It's pretty nifty stuff.

Netflix OpenConnect pushes 20GBit+ on a FreeBSD-9 base with nginx and SSDs. Over TCP. To internet connected destinations.

Please re-evaluate your statement.

Nope, I just grew up hacking on computers that came with a "hack me! i dare you!" manual. If you're going to hand out lots of single purpose devices like this, why not let the kids decide what to do with them when they don't need/want a wikipedia-only reader anymore.

Apparently so - http://toddbot.blogspot.com/2010/05/wikireader-forth-and-hacking.html .. FORTH? Wow. Amusing. :)

Cool, and can you modify, upload and run a replacement image?

.. aren't they opening up the software stack on it too?

I bet some of those same kids would hack at the software. It's a general purpose computer, after all, just running an ugly looking renderer.

.. really? You mean, all of the phone firmware and wifi firmware and bluetooth firmware and drivers are all 100% open source?

Cool.

Otherwise, yes, the phone vendors will have to co-operate even further with the Pentagon over what is offered today in open source.

The AR9280 and later NICs support spectrum analyser mode, as a diagnostic thing.

Yes, this includes the AR7010+AR9280, AR7010+AR9287, and the AR9271 (which is an AR9285 wifi core.)

Atheros make high end and low end chips. It's up to the manufacturers as to what they choose. They choose price. Sad, but true.

You can buy the higher-end 2x2 and 3x3 devices. The unit prices are more than the low end chips.

Driver support? It's up to the company you bought the laptop from, not Atheros. Atheros only makes the chips. We don't make the NICs or the rest of the device. Especially in the windows world, vendors have a habit of doing 'strange ass shit' here and there. Please don't blame QCA for the weird, cheap-ass, cost-cutting crap that goes on elsewhere.

.. you mean, how the firmware is clearbsd licenced?

Except for the Tensilica runtime, that's MIT licenced?

Except for two GPLv2 files from ECoS? Which state that only those two files fall under GPL, not the rest of the stuff it's compiled with?

I'm pretty sure it's free like you wish. You can create a closed source derivative of the firmware if you so choose.

The master mode operation in firmware right now is limited to a handful (4? 8?) clients.

Whatever the max is before it runs out of RAM.

I think it just refuses to take on new associations.

You're welcome!

Things then crash. :-)

Embedded software looks different to your Linux/FreeBSD kernel development. There's fixed buffers allocated for things. Once those buffers are full, everything stops until they're not full.

If you want more information please subscribe to the ath9k firmware list and ask questions there. I'd rather everyone benefit from the answers!

The FSF decided to investigate this AR9271 part. I'm not sure why.

The AR7010+AR9280 NICs are dual-band. There's AR7010+AR9283 NICs that are 2x2 2.4ghz only. The AR7010+AR9287 NICs are also 2x2 2.4GHz only but support a few newer things (like short-GI in 20MHz mode, and generally better behaviour all around.)

Hopefully the FSF certifies the AR7010 based firmware devices too. But, they've chosen this one and I'm glad they saw it through.

I don't know if there's a hardware list that shows the dual-band ath9k_htc hardware. But it's out there, somewhere.