Arch Linux

jdm

Member

Registered: 2009-02-25

Posts: 10

[solved] No wireless N for Broadcom b43

Hello,

Hoping someone can help here. Recently I have noticed a sudden degradation of wireless performance. As I live in a small apartment, this was unexpected. Changing broadcast channels, setting static DNS, getting closer to the router all did not help. Consequently, I decided to switch from G to N thinking that would boost performance. Surprisingly, I cannot associate with my router once it is set to N-only. I am running Arch on a Macbook Pro with the Broadcom BCM4322 card (14e4:432b) using the b43 driver.

If I connect to a B or G network, I have no issues, but thus far have been unable to connect to N. I get multiple errors in the logs when attempting to associate:

[27617.971077] wlan0: authenticate with 00:26:62:xx:xx:xx (try 1)
[27617.974861] wlan0: authenticated
[27617.975232] wlan0: associate with 00:26:62:xx:xx:xx (try 1)
[27617.978167] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:26:62:xx:xx:xx (capab=0x431 status=10 aid=0)
[27617.978171] wlan0: 00:26:62:xx:xx:xx denied association (code=10)
[27617.978426] wlan0: deauthenticating from 00:26:62:xx:xx:xx by local choice (reason=3)
... repeats and repeats ...

My router is broadcasting in N-only mode using WPA2. I switched from WPA2 to WPA to see if it was a wpa_supplicant issue, but I run into the same result. I know the psk is correct since I don't make any changes to my wpa_supplicant.conf when switching from G to N and back. After googling for a couple days trying to figure out a solution, I cannot find one, so I am turning to the forums for help. Hopefully I am missing something simple and/or easy that I have overlooked. I even tried the dreaded broadcom-wl driver, but that opened up a new pandora's box and I immediately chastised myself for installing it.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Some possibly relevant output:

$ uname -sr
Linux 3.3.3-1-ARCH

$ lspci -nn | grep -i broadcom
04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:432b] (rev 01)

$ yaourt -Ss b43
core/b43-fwcutter 015-1 [installed]
    firmware extractor for the bcm43xx kernel module
aur/b43-firmware 5.100.138-2 [installed] (275)
    Firmware for Broadcom B43 wireless networking chips

$ lsmod | grep b43
b43                   347913  0 
ssb                    48216  1 b43
bcma                   21810  1 b43
pcmcia                 36073  2 ssb,b43
mac80211              391455  1 b43
mmc_core               82671  2 ssb,b43
cfg80211              176857  2 mac80211,b43

$ iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"TheFailBoat"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off

Last edited by jdm (2012-05-15 16:58:11)

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: [solved] No wireless N for Broadcom b43

5GHz is not supported yet in b43. If that's what your N-only network is using, that's your problem.

litemotiv

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2008-08-01

Posts: 5,026

Re: [solved] No wireless N for Broadcom b43

Isn't the 4322 supported by brcmsmac?

---

ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: [solved] No wireless N for Broadcom b43

Isn't the 4322 supported by brcmsmac?

No. BCM43224, BCM43225 and BCM4313 are. The closed source wl (broadcom-sta) supports 4322 though.

jdm

Member

Registered: 2009-02-25

Posts: 10

Re: [solved] No wireless N for Broadcom b43

5GHz is not supported yet in b43. If that's what your N-only network is using, that's your problem.

Hey that's awesome, thanks for the answer. I don't know how I missed that on their page. Do you (or anyone else) happen to know if using ndiswrapper is worth trying for N support or if that's a stable-ish option?

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: [solved] No wireless N for Broadcom b43

I'm not sure if ndiswrapper supports b43 cards. Try the wl driver, however that one is know to cause kernel panics.