NAME¶
bwn
—
Broadcom BCM43xx IEEE 802.11b/g wireless network
driver
SYNOPSIS¶
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel
configuration file:
device siba_bwn
device bwn
device wlan
device wlan_amrr
device firmware
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following
line in
loader.conf(5):
DESCRIPTION¶
The
bwn
driver provides support for Broadcom
BCM43xx based PCI/CardBus network adapters.
It supports
station
and
monitor
mode operation. Only one virtual
interface may be configured at any time. For more information on configuring
this device, see
ifconfig(8).
This driver requires firmware to be loaded before it will work. The
ports/net/bwn-firmware-kmod port needs to
be installed before
ifconfig(8) will work. Most
cases you need to use bwn_v4_ucode module but if you are a LP (low power) PHY
user please uses bwn_v4_lp_ucode module.
HARDWARE¶
The
bwn
driver supports Broadcom BCM43xx
based wireless devices, including:
Card |
Chip |
Bus |
Standard |
Apple Airport Extreme |
BCM4318 |
PCI |
b/g |
ASUS WL-138g |
BCM4318 |
PCI |
b/g |
Buffalo WLI-CB-G54S |
BCM4318 |
CardBus |
b/g |
Dell Wireless 1390 |
BCM4311 |
Mini PCI |
b/g |
Dell Wireless 1470 |
BCM4318 |
Mini PCI |
b/g |
Dell Truemobile 1400 |
BCM4309 |
Mini PCI |
b/g |
HP Compaq 6715b |
BCM4312 |
PCI |
b/g |
HP nx6125 |
BCM4319 |
PCI |
b/g |
Linksys WPC54G Ver 3 |
BCM4318 |
CardBus |
b/g |
Linksys WPC54GS Ver 2 |
BCM4318 |
CardBus |
b/g |
US Robotics 5411 |
BCM4318 |
CardBus |
b/g |
Users of older Broadcom chipsets (BCM4301, BCM4303 and BCM4306 rev 2) must use
bwi(4) because the v4 version of the firmware
does not support these chips. The newer firmware is too big to fit into these
old chips.
EXAMPLES¶
Join an existing BSS network (i.e., connect to an access point):
ifconfig wlan create wlandev bwn0 inet 192.168.0.20 \
netmask 0xffffff00
Join a specific BSS network with network name
“
my_net
”:
ifconfig wlan create wlandev bwn0
ssid my_net up
Join a specific BSS network with 64-bit WEP encryption:
ifconfig wlan create wlandev bwn0 ssid my_net \
wepmode on wepkey 0x1234567890 weptxkey 1 up
LOADER TUNABLES¶
Tunables can be set at the
loader(8) prompt before
booting the kernel or stored in
loader.conf(5).
- hw.bwn.msi_disable
- This tunable disables MSI support on the hardware. The default value is
0.
- hw.bwn.usedma
- This tunable enables DMA operations on the hardware. If the value is 0,
PIO mode would be used. The default value is 1.
SEE ALSO¶
arp(4),
bwi(4),
cardbus(4),
intro(4),
pci(4),
wlan(4),
wlan_amrr(4),
ifconfig(8),
wpa_supplicant(8)
HISTORY¶
The
bwn
driver first appeared in
FreeBSD 8.1.
AUTHORS¶
The
bwn
driver was written by
Weongyo Jeong
⟨weongyo@FreeBSD.org⟩.
CAVEATS¶
Some LP PHY devices have DMA operation problems that in that case try to use PIO
mode.