Port of bcm43xx from softmac to mac80211 is available for testing

Port of bcm43xx from softmac to mac80211 is available for testing

[Larry Finger]

The port of bcm43xx from softmac to mac80211 is available for testing. There are two patch sets that 
can be downloaded from ftp://lwfinger.dynalias.org/patches and be applied to kernel 2.6.23-rc1 or 
-rc2, the mainstream git tree (Linus's), and Linville's wireless-2.6 git tree.

The two files are ftp://lwfinger.dynalias.org/patches/SSB_Final, which installs the SSB driver, and 
ftp://lwfinger.dynalias.org/patches/port_to_mac80211, which has the changes for the bcm43xx driver. 
The resulting driver will use V3 firmware.

These patches are similar to the 4301 test driver that was circulated earlier. The major change is 
that the earlier version was trying to set the power too low. Once that was fixed, performance has 
become quite good, as shown below. I'm still working on the power setup, which may help the BCM4306.

Transker rates (xmit/recv in Mbs), obtained by using an Iperf server on my LAN

Bit Rate	BCM4311		BCM4318		BCM4306
set (Mbs)
1		1.17/8.66	1.22/9.39	1.22/3.73
2		1.96/11.2	1.98/12.5	1.90/4.98
5.5		4.15/17.7	4.19/17.7	3.98/5.09
6		4.86/17.3	4.86/19.9	2.66/4.94
9		6.58/17.7	6.56/19.9	3.26/5.01
11		6.57/14.2	6.54/18.5	6.07/5.20
18		10.7/19.6	10.7/20.2	4.74/5.05
24		12.6/19.6	12.8/20.0	4.12/5.34
36		16.2/20.1	15.9/20.1	4.76/4.90
48		17.9/20.0	15.1/19.6	3.70/4.18
54		19.0/19.8	15.1/20.0	1.83/2.64

These results look rather good for the later models - my BCM4306 has a PHY rev of 1. On this 
version, much more is required in the PHY setup, and we clearly have more work for that device.

Please let me know of any problems in applying the patches, or any oops's that occur.

Larry

Re: Port of bcm43xx from softmac to mac80211 is available for testing

[Larry Finger]

Richard Jonsson wrote:

> "rmmod bcm43xx" when kde is running hangs rmmod and prevents a clean shutdown. 
> I tried to find which program causes this while using bcm4301 driver, but so 
> far no luck. System shuts down fine if I don't try to rmmod first. rmmod 
> works fine from runlevel 3 aside from this message when inserting module 
> again:
> "net eth1: device_rename: sysfs_create_symlink failed (-17)"

I just got one of these during bootup, which prevented bcm43xx from starting correctly.

The logged sequence was:

kernel: bcm43xx-phy1: Broadcom 4311 WLAN found
kernel: ssb: Switching to IEEE 802.11 core, index 1
kernel: bcm43xx-phy1 debug: Found PHY: Analog 4, Type 2, Revision 8
kernel: bcm43xx-phy1 debug: Found Radio: Manuf 0x17F, Version 0x2050, Revision 2
kernel: bcm43xx-phy1 debug: Radio turned off
kernel: wmaster0: Selected rate control algorithm 'simple'
ifup: Service network not started and mode 'auto' -> skipping
kernel: net eth1: device_rename: sysfs_create_symlink failed (-17)
ifup: Network interface is managed from NetworkManager
ifup: NetworkManager will be advised to set up eth1
ifup: but it cannot be assured from here.
kernel: bcm43xx-phy1 debug: Adding Interface type 2
kernel: ssb: Switching to PCI-E core, index 3
kernel: ssb: Switching to IEEE 802.11 core, index 1
kernel: bcm43xx-phy1: bcm43xx: Microcode bcm43xx_microcode5.fw3.fw loaded

The fix for this was to 'modprobe -r bcm43xx' followed by 'modprobe bcm43xx', which got everything 
started OK.

Larry