Re: Broadcom B43 Wireless Card / Driver Issues

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On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 09:53:27AM -0200, Martin Marques wrote:
> Manish Kathuria escribió:
> >I am using Fedora 8 x86_64 (kernel 2.6.23.14-107) on my Dell Vostro
> >laptop which has a Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wireless mini PCI
> >lan device which has been automatically detected and uses the b43
> >wireless driver.
> >
> >I have configured the wireless device wlan0 using a static IP address
> >and have provided the ESSID, CHANNEL, MODE, RATE settings. The
> >wireless device comes up and gets associated with the  Access Point /
> >Wireless Router when the system is started. However if the wireless
> >router is restarted the wireless device on the laptop fails to
> >associate with it again and I have to restart the network service in
> >order to connect to it. If I remember correctly, the Intel Centrino
> >ipw2200 device on my older laptop never had this problem and nor does
> >a PCI wireless card (Realtek 8180) which I have configured using
> >ndiswrapper. What could be the reason for this problem ? Any tips or
> >suggestions ?
> 
> Use NetworkManager.

Good advice.  Alternatively you could use wpa_supplicant (whether or
not you are using WPA encryption), or you could simply do "iwconfig
wlan0 essid $ESSID" whenever you detect that your AP has been reset.

If you want a technical explanation...the hardware in question is
"soft MAC" device which uses the mac80211 infrastructure in the
kernel.  The mac80211 component has a limited MLME implemenation
which relies on userland intervention at a number of points.  One of
those points is for triggering associations.  When you reset your AP,
your association is lost.  So, you must trigger a new association.
wpa_supplicant (which is also used by NetworkManager) is smart enough
to trigger the association for you.

As for why it works for the other devices cited, the ipw2200 has a
robust MLME implemented in firmware.  It does not require userland
intervention.  The rtl8180 actually is a "soft MAC" device, but since
you are using ndiswrapper (which should not be needed in F8 BTW)
the Windows driver must contain it's own MLME implementation.

Hth!

John
-- 
John W. Linville
linville@xxxxxxxxxx


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