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archway

Member

Registered: 2016-10-09

Posts: 2

Broadcom 43602 not using 802.11ac protocol

After several days of tinkering and searching I must give in and ask the pros for help.

I can connect to WiFi (5Ghz channels) no problem, but it only connects with a transmit rate of 450 mbits (802.11n max).

I am using a MacBook Pro 11,5 that connects in the 900 mbits range when using OS X.
All the other posts I could find deal with wifi not working at all, but that's not my case.

Turning off power management also made no difference.

Some Info:

uname -a
Linux ARCH-BOOK 4.7.6-1-macbook #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Oct 4 00:33:44 EDT 2016 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Note: I tried the unpatched kernel too with no change.

lspci -v
04:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43602 802.11ac Wireless LAN SoC (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device 0152
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 50
	Memory at b0800000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
	Memory at b0400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: brcmfmac
	Kernel modules: brcmfmac

iw dev wlp4s0 link
Connected to 50:6a:03:XX:XX:XX (on wlp4s0)
	SSID: XXX 5Ghz
	freq: 5220
	RX: 21156877 bytes (15845 packets)
	TX: 2861263 bytes (13968 packets)
	signal: -38 dBm
	tx bitrate: 450.0 MBit/s

	bss flags:	
	dtim period:	2
	beacon int:	100

Thanks in advance.

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,785

Re: Broadcom 43602 not using 802.11ac protocol

Something is not right.  As far as I know, the MIMO radio on the MBP is capable of two spatial streams.  On 802.11n, this means a max of 300Mb/s on a 40MHz wide channel or 144Mb/s on a 20MHz wide channel.

What is your router?  Only higher end routers are capable of playing in the 400+ Mb/s space.

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archway

Member

Registered: 2016-10-09

Posts: 2

Re: Broadcom 43602 not using 802.11ac protocol

I have a Netgear R8500 as the main router broadcasting on two 5Ghz channels (44 and 153) and a Linksys WRT 1900AC broadcasting on 5Ghz channel 48. The linksys is hard wired to the Netgear and acts as a wireless bridge.