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Open Firmware Released For Broadcom Wireless
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Jan 11, 2009 06:48 AM
from the perverse-incentives-divine-results dept.
from the perverse-incentives-divine-results dept.
mcgrof writes "Linux developers have announced the release of a reverse-engineered open source firmware for Broadcom 4306 and 4318 wireless hardware, licensed under the GPLv2. 'Although the base firmware is not fully 802.11 compliant, e.g., it does not support RTS/CTS procedure or QoS, we believe that someone could be interested in testing it. The firmware does not require the kernel to be modified and it uses the same shared memory layout and global registers usage of the original stuff from broadcom to ease loading by the b43 driver.' You can go check out and download the firmware at the Italian Universita' Degli Studi Di Brescia Open FirmWare for WiFi networks project page. This is a good example of clean room reverse engineering design where one group worked on specifications while another worked on the the driver and the firmware. Kudos to the specification writers and bcm43xx development team for their hard work."
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Cool (Score:3, Funny)
Does this mean Broadcom can finally stop acting like precious little bitches, resign themselves to the enviable and open-source their officials drivers so we can have complete support?
Why must they insist on holding out? It's obvious that if they don't open source their drivers, someone else will. Might as well supply official drivers in that case.
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Re:Cool (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
FWIW, they Broadcom didn't help with the wireless drivers either.
Re:Cool (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't care much either but a large percentage of laptops (my dell laptop for example) use broadcom wifi hardware and to get it to work I had to dig down to the console to implement a fix in ubuntu. Seeing as how more than 50% of consumer computers this year were laptops, this solves a very annoying issue for something like 60% of all non-thinkpad linux-laptop users.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say setting up wi-fi is fairly fiddly even if the drivers are working correctly. Visiting the correct IP address to enable "wireless", setting up security options including encryption keys, WPA passphrase, creating a wlan0 entry, and editing /etc/rc.d/rc.local to make sbin/iwconfig set up the channel, essid, key and "managed mode".
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What distro are you using? I don't recall having to do any of that when doing the ndiswrapper workaround in ubuntu
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I had to do the workaround manually in 8.04 -maybe it's changed in 8.10?-; you dodged my question what distro did you have to do all that manual setup in?
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I am using Fedora Core 8 on a laptop with a Atheros AR5212/AR5213 Multiprotocol MAC/baseband processor. The drivers wrk perfectly.
First of all, the broadband router was not configured to enable wifi - that required some grokking of the installation manual to get the IP address, username and password to access the configuration menu, all on the same channel/frequency.
Then there was the configuration to follow various Security Tips [about.com].
Regardless of my location, six or seven different wi-fi networks will show up
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What on earth?
Its not even that fiddly on Gentoo.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Intel also has to work under those restrictions, and their drivers/firmware are not nearly as shitty. Also, the driver is at least open source.
See: iwlwifi.
It wasn't always this way, of course. ipw3945 and friends were asstastic.
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I for one welcome... (Score:2, Interesting)
Firmware, not driver (Score:5, Informative)
... no longer needing ndiswrapper
You're confused. There already are reverse engineered drivers for Broadcom chips, and they are included in the Linux kernel tree, no less (b43 and b43legacy). These drivers were not developed by Broadcom, who provide their own binary driver for 2.4 kernels (wl.o).
This is about the firmware -- the binary blob that is loaded into the chip's embedded CPU, and with which the drivers, whether binary or opensource, need to interact.
I, for one, welcome open source firmware, and am looking forward to using the firmware's idea of link quality in my mesh networking experiments [jussieu.fr].
Parent
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Broadcom, who provide their own binary driver for 2.4 kernels (wl.o).
They also provide a closed driver for 2.6 kernels.
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[Broadcom] also provide a closed driver for 2.6 kernels.
I've heard there's one, but unlike the 2.4 version, it is not widely available.
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http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
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I haven't had any problems getting it.
I stand corrected. Sorry for the mis-information.
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Solution: Modify BIOS hardware IDs, flash, install new network card. That is what I had to do and it works great. Now I have an Atheros ar5xxx and use madwifi drivers.
What type of processor is used (Score:2, Interesting)
What kind of processor is used?
It does not seem like ARM code what I assumed, no general purpose registers at all.
Seems like some kind of memory only architecture.
Can anyone more knowledgeable chip in? Seems very interesting to play with.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
According to the specs PDF, it's a MIPS32 core.
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Re:What type of processor is used (Score:4, Informative)
Typically, it's MIPS32 R4000 architecture.
To be entirely pedantic, it's usually a MIPS32 4k core [mips.com], which is derived from the old R4000 chip.
Parent
Usefull (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously you can now implement all kinds of things in there. For example you could implement a simple wireless mesh router which would still work when your computer is in standby.
Point-to-Point (Score:3, Interesting)
This would be really useful if you wanted to develop a protocol for single long distsance point-to-point linke. I seem to remember Intel was developing something for use in developing countries with a special version of a wireless router but this gives you the source so has much more hack value.
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the XO has a Marvell chip which implements a mesh-networking AP, so that the XO can act as a repeater even when the main power is turned off. Or does it? It was certainly supposed to :)
Re: (Score:2)
Have you any links to technical docs about that?
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Marvell libertas (Score:2)
the XO has a Marvell chip which implements a mesh-networking AP, so that the XO can act as a repeater even when the main power is turned off.
AFAIK, the Marvell chip has an on-board MIPS core and 64 kB of memory, so you can run whatever you can fit in 64 kB of MIPS code without CPU intervention.
Two firmwares are available, one that makes the chip act as a normal, softmac wifi chip, and one that implements parts of 802.11s in the chip -- IIRC, forwarding is done in the chip, but routing table management is done by the CPU.
The chip will not continue working when system power is off, but it will forward packets without waking the CPU. This mean
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Absolutely. You could also optimice the protocoll for many situations.
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Shame on you Broadcom (Score:2)
Not so bad when it is a separately bought product but plain obnoxious when it's integrated into some other equipment like a laptop.
So yeah, kudos to the developers.
Re:Shame on you Broadcom (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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Microsoft helped. They provided a means for hardware manufacturers to make drivers that are closed source (VxD files, sys files). Before that, everyone built their modules, programmed themselves from schematics, etc etc.
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No it isn't Microsoft at all. The problem is with the "new globalization" we have a situation where if you build a prototype in the US it is 10x cheaper to manufacturer it in China. The China can make a copy of it, sometimes in the same factory, and ship it into the US. With no R&D expense to recoup, they can seriously undercut the original company which is then driven out of business.
One way to keep this from happening is you outsource the hardware but keep the firmware separate. And you have trick
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I hear you saying "We have 'closed source' hardware 'cause a bunch of unethical folks own fabrication facilities."
Am I wrong here?
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Broadcom, like many other manufacturers in this field, claim that FCC regulations forbid them from allowing modifications to the radio controls, specifically the access to channels below 1 and above 11. (I say "claim" because the FCC doesn't really care, as Atheros has already shown.) Microsoft has nothing to do with it.
Also, really, if you're going to blame an evil corporation, perhaps Apple would be more appropriate, as they have a propensity for shipping Broadcom wireless devices.
Re:Shame on you Broadcom (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. Luckily my new dell laptop allowed me to swap out the broadcom stuff that came with it for an intel wireless card instead. $20. Works flawlessly, even with kismet. Bonus, can run managed and monitor mode at the same time:
http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=iwl3945 [aircrack-ng.org]
http://www.google.com/products?q=intel+3945&btnG=Search+Products&show=dd [google.com]
So, for the hassle, I'd rather have a card that is properly supported, and companies *other* than broadcom will continue to get my money.
Parent
Error in Title (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is no error in the title, because there is no trademark symbol appearing after "Open Firmware". Titles are always capitalized in proper English, and the word "Open" is applicable in this context. Slashdot editors don't and aren't, but this is not an example of one of their many obvious errors. There is a problem with your debug code. You have reported a parser bug as an input error.
Hope it works someday (Score:3, Interesting)
What I really need is to be able to pitch over bcm43legacy for a driver which supports Master (AP) mode. It's really pathetic how many cards DON'T do this. I think you can hack 3945abg drivers to do it, but the ONLY reliable host is Atheros. (PC Engines sells Atheros-based Wistron MiniPCI for like $29...)
Italian Universita?? (Score:2)
You can go check out and download the firmware at the Italian Universita' Degli Studi Di Brescia
Woulnd't that make it Fermi-ware?
Other implementations from the same spec? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
<sarcasm>
Yeah! Not to mention that they released the source code too! How do they think they're going to monetize something by releasing the source code so their competitors can see it?!?! When will those open source guys ever learn?
Note to open source developers: If you're going to release something, you need to wait until it's completely finished (as EmagGeek said) and not release the source code with it!
</sarcasm>
(score -1: unfamiliar with the concept, but commenting on it authoritatively
Re: (Score:2)
if it' a seperate mini-pci card, then simply order an Intel based one from CDW as I did. Problem solved on multiple laptops as the Intel models have OpenSource Drivers from Intel
Re:Hope this works for me (Score:4, Funny)
It's easier to moan on slashdot ..
https://launchpad.net/auto-ndiswrapper [launchpad.net]
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, really simple solution, but sometimes I miss out on the simple things.
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I think they do understand that. However, they also understand that "good enough" is better than "nothing", which makes me wonder why you are complaining.