# Wi-Fi



## tzoi516 (Jun 4, 2014)

In FreeBSD we have to create wlan0, but in OpenBSD we can attach the wireless device directly (i.e. ath0). Why?


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## tingo (Jun 6, 2014)

Because in FreeBSD, the generic 802.11 code is separated from the code that deals with the hardware layer. In the words of wlan(4): "wlan supports multi-mode devices capable of operating in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands and supports numerous 802.11 standards: 802.11a, 802.11b,  802.11g, 802.11n, and 802.11s (Draft 3.0)."
and "Drivers provide 802.11 functionality through wlan interfaces that are created at runtime using interface cloning.  This is done with the ifconfig(8) create command or using the wlans_IFX variable in rc.conf(5)."
HTH


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## tzoi516 (Jun 6, 2014)

I really appreciate the reply, and I did glean that from the man page.  :h

I just don't understand the logic to treat one set of devices different from similar devices, otherwise a elan0 would make sense for the same reason.


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## tingo (Jun 6, 2014)

Well, the current wireless stack on FreeBSD is a bit younger than wired networking, which has been there "forever" (it has been improved in many ways during this time).
Perhaps the developers who wrote the new wireless stack found this domain (wireless networking) sufficiently complex that they found out that the current level of abstraction / separation was needed to get a clean and well working implementation?
If you are interested enough, the mailing list archives for that period is available, perhaps you could find some interesting threads on this subject there.


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## tzoi516 (Jun 6, 2014)

I didn't find anything in the mailing list archives, but I only went back to Jan 2013.

I do appreciate your replies. Thanks.


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