b43 in AP mode?
 

Hi,

as seen on http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
b43 supports AP mode. I am trying to create an in-house
wireless network between my desktop machine and notebook.
Both the PCI and PCCard cards have a BCM4318 chip:
- Belkin F5D7001ee (version 2001ee)
- Belkin F5D7011ee (version 2001fr)

On a sidenote, the notebook is still running Fedora7 and
it's interesting that while the latest kernel uses b43 drivers
it tries to load the firmware extracted by bcm43xx-fwcutter,
which creates firmware files with a different naming from
b43-fwcutter which was needed under Fedora 8 on the
desktop machine. Both machines are running x86-64 Fedoras.

Anyway, both machines have their cards and drivers up and
running, this is on the desktop machine:

# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0

# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=wlan0
HWADDR=
BOOTPROTO=none
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=192.168.1.1
DOMAIN=
ONBOOT=no
USERCTL=no
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=yes
ESSID=zgyvrksngyvrd20
CHANNEL=1
MODE=Master
RATE=Auto

# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"homewlan"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=27 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B
Encryption key:off

Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

# dmesg
...
ssb: Sonics Silicon Backplane found on PCI device 0000:01:09.0
b43-phy0: Broadcom 4318 WLAN found
b43-phy0 debug: Found PHY: Analog 3, Type 2, Revision 7
b43-phy0 debug: Found Radio: Manuf 0x17F, Version 0x2050, Revision 8
phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'simple'
b43-phy0 debug: Loading firmware version 351.126 (2006-07-29 05:54:02)
Registered led device: b43-phy0:tx
Registered led device: b43-phy0:rx
b43-phy0 debug: Chip initialized
b43-phy0 debug: 32-bit DMA initialized
input: Unspecified device as /class/input/input10
b43-phy0 debug: Wireless interface started
b43-phy0 debug: Adding Interface type 2
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready

Note the difference between iwconfig and the config file:
I requested Master mode but iwconfig shows Managed mode.
Is there anything else I need to run for using it in AP mode?
Can someone point me to some Fedora-specific documentation?

Thanks in advance,
Zoltán Böszörményi



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b43 in AP mode?
 

On Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 12:20:51PM +0100, Zoltan Boszormenyi wrote:

> as seen on http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
> b43 supports AP mode. I am trying to create an in-house
> wireless network between my desktop machine and notebook.

AP mode is not currently supported upstream for mac80211-based drivers
(like b43). Some F7 kernels have some old, broken code which claimed
to support AP mode. But, you would be hard pressed to find a version
of hostapd that worked with any of them.

If your purpose is to share your Internet connection over wireless I
would have to advise using an IBSS (i.e. "ad hoc") wireless setup and
a routed solution (e.g. NAT or proxy ARP). Even better, you might
consider just acquiring a consumer grade AP such as the WRT54G.

Hth!

John
--
John W. Linville
linville@redhat.com

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b43 in AP mode?
 

John W. Linville írta:

On Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 12:20:51PM +0100, Zoltan Boszormenyi wrote:



as seen on http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
b43 supports AP mode. I am trying to create an in-house
wireless network between my desktop machine and notebook.



AP mode is not currently supported upstream for mac80211-based drivers
(like b43). Some F7 kernels have some old, broken code which claimed
to support AP mode. But, you would be hard pressed to find a version
of hostapd that worked with any of them.

If your purpose is to share your Internet connection over wireless I
would have to advise using an IBSS (i.e. "ad hoc") wireless setup and
a routed solution (e.g. NAT or proxy ARP). Even better, you might
consider just acquiring a consumer grade AP such as the WRT54G.



Thanks, it seems I will need a standalone AP.
Ad hoc mode is very flaky...


Hth!

John





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