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Atheros AR9271, AR7010 devices (ath9k_htc)

This page describes how to enable support for WiFi devices based on Atheros AR9271 and AR7010 chipsets on Debian systems.

ath9k_htc is a driver supporting Atheros 802.11n USB chipsets, included in the mainline Linux kernel since version 2.6.35. Supported devices are listed at the end of this page.

AR7010-based devices (e.g. Netgear WNDA3200, TP-Link TL-WN821N v3) operate in USB mass storage mode by default. Since Linux 2.6.39, the driver will send the necessary command to enable wireless LAN operation.1

Non-free firmware is required, which can be provided by installing the firmware-atheros package.

{i} Atheros AR9170-based 802.11 draft-n devices are supported by ar9170usb.

Installation

Wheezy

  1. Add a "non-free" component to /etc/apt/sources.list, for example:

    # Debian Wheezy (testing)
    deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian wheezy main contrib non-free
  2. Update the list of available packages and install the firmware-atheros package:

    aptitude update && aptitude install firmware-atheros
  3. Connect the device to your system. The ath9k_htc kernel module is automatically loaded for supported devices.

  4. Configure your wireless interface as appropriate.

Squeeze

  1. In some case, the needed firmware is not present in the squeeze repository. Then you should add backports with "non-free" component to /etc/apt/sources.list, for example:

    # Debian Squeeze Backports
    deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main non-free
  2. Update the list of available packages and install the firmware-atheros package:

    aptitude update &&  aptitude -t squeeze-backports install firmware-atheros
  3. Connect the device to your system. The ath9k_htc kernel module is automatically loaded for supported devices.

  4. Configure your wireless interface as appropriate.

Supported Devices

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/USB explains how to identify a USB device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of modinfo ath9k_htc in Debian 3.2.0 (3.2.32-1) kernel images.

See Also


CategoryHardware | CategoryWireless