Broadcom has released source for their wireless driver

[Tyler Aviss]

On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 10:30 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> | From: Tyler Aviss <tjaviss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
> |
> |  I had a laptop that once only worked with the
> | broadcom-developed driver, which tended to do funky things and drop
> | out or crash at times.
>
> The only broadcom-developed driver that I know of for x86 was the NDIS
> driver (i.e. for MS Windows).  There was an amazing kludge that would
> allow the kernel to use NDIS drivers (NDIS Wrapper).  Is that what you
> used?
>

I've used ndiswrapper before, but the one I was thinking of was the
STA driver (which you link below). Broadcom released that one quite
awhile ago, and it worked sometimes, but it was one of those "cross
your fingers and toes" moments if you ever did and kernel/OS upgrades.

> NDIS Wrapper had licensing issues, through no fault (or greed) of the
> developer.  I think that it could only be installed by the end-use,
> not the distro.
>
> There are certain mismatches between the Windows driver model and the
> Linux driver model that made NDIS Wrapper theoretically iffy.  One:
> Windows allows drivers 64k of stack space; Linux: 4K (or 8k, I don't
> quite remember).
>
> | Then the "free" driver started to work for my laptop, it did a few
> | other funky things, but was generally more reliable than the one from
> | Broadcomm.
>
> There have been a couple of open source Broadcom drivers, if I
> remember.  I think that B43, the one currently in use, has been fine
> for "clients".
>
> There are three sorts of 802.11 I think:
>  STA: Station (client)
>  AP: Access Point (server)
>  Ad Hoc: peer-to-peer (STA to STA)
>
> The best explanation I just found is:
>  <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc757419%28WS.10%29.aspx>
>
> If this is the broadcom source code, it is sad to see that it is
> STA-only:
>  <http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php>
>
> I don't know if
>  git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/staging-next-2.6.git
> is better (or even different).
>
> Here's the README:
> <http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/gregkh/staging-next-2.6.git;a=blob;f=drivers/staging/brcm80211/README;h=97fa01c06b12db358446b83005c9bb69ed5effca;hb=staging-next>
>
> | On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 10:04 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
> | > We've had reverse engineered drivers already but they have not been
> | > able to do the base-station side of things (STA??).  I hope that this
> | > means OpenWRT can work on more wireless routers without using the
> | > binary module.
>
> I should have said AP, not STA.
>



-- 
Tyler Aviss
Systems Support
LPIC/LPIC-2/DCTS/CLA

“It can takes months to gain a customer, but only seconds to lose one"
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