bwi (4)

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Copyright (c) 2009 Christian Brueffer
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(The comments found at the beginning of the groff file "man4/bwi.4freebsd".)

NAME

bwi - 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 bwi device wlan device wlan_amrr device firmware

Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf5:

if_bwi_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

The ifconfig 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/bwi-firmware-kmod port needs to be installed before ifconfig(8) will work.

HARDWARE

The ifconfig driver supports Broadcom BCM43xx based wireless devices, including:

Card Ta Chip Ta Bus Ta Standard

"Apple Airport Extreme   BCM4306 PCI     b/g"

"Apple Airport ExtremeBCM4318PCIb/g"

"ASUS WL-138gBCM4318PCIb/g"

"Buffalo WLI-CB-G54SBCM4318CardBusb/g"

"Buffalo WLI-PCI-G54SBCM4306PCIb/g"

"Compaq R4035 onboardBCM4306PCIb/g"

"Dell Wireless 1390BCM4311Mini PCIb/g"

"Dell Wireless 1470BCM4318Mini PCIb/g"

"Dell Truemobile 1300 r2BCM4306Mini PCIb/g"

"Dell Truemobile 1400BCM4309Mini PCIb/g"

"HP nx6125BCM4319PCIb/g"

"Linksys WPC54G Ver 3BCM4318CardBusb/g"

"Linksys WPC54GS Ver 2BCM4318CardBusb/g"

"TRENDnet TEW-401PCplusBCM4306CardBusb/g"

"US Robotics 5411BCM4318CardBusb/g"

The
ifconfig driver uses the older v3 version of Broadcom's firmware. While this older firmware does support most BCM43xx parts, the bwn(4) driver works better for the newer chips it supports. You must use the ifconfig driver if you are using older Broadcom chipsets (BCM4301, BCM4303 and BCM4306 rev 2). The v4 version of the firmware that bwn(4) uses does not support these chips.

EXAMPLES

Join an existing BSS network (i.e., connect to an access point):

ifconfig wlan create wlandev bwi0 inet 192.168.0.20 \
    netmask 0xffffff00

Join a specific BSS network with network name ``my_net ''

"ifconfig wlan create wlandev bwi0 ssid my_net up"

Join a specific BSS network with 64-bit WEP encryption:

ifconfig wlan create wlandev bwi0 ssid my_net \
        wepmode on wepkey 0x1234567890 weptxkey 1 up

SEE ALSO

arp(4), cardbus(4), intro(4), pci(4), wlan(4), wlan_amrr4, ifconfig(8), wpa_supplicant8

HISTORY

The ifconfig driver first appeared in Fx 8.0 .

AUTHORS

An -nosplit The ifconfig driver was written for DragonFly BSD by An Sepherosa Ziehau and subsequently ported to Fx .

BUGS

Some card based on the BCM4306 and BCM4309 chips do not work properly on channel 1, 2 and 3.