# Supported 802.11n chipsets



## Airstrip1 (Jan 1, 2009)

Dear all,

I am about to buy a wireless network card for my home server, running FreeBSD. I am thinking about getting a 802.11n (draft) card as I don't expect any bigger changes in the final standard. Is there any chipsets/cards supported by the drivers of 7.0, the upcoming 7.1 or from the card manufacturer? Any recommendations?


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## trev (Jan 2, 2009)

Check the release notes for FreeBSD 7-STABLE (7.1-RELEASE to be) at:

http://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/7-STABLE/hardware/support.html#WLAN


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## Airstrip1 (Jan 5, 2009)

Thank you,

The Atheros chipset seems interesting ("_The ath(4) driver supports all Atheros Cardbus or PCI cards, except those that are based on the AR5005VL chipset_"). The Belkin F5D8001 N1 with AR5008 seems to work (on Linux?), but with limited speed. Do the list in the release notes promise full support (802.11n) or just partial (802.11b/g on 802.11n device) support?


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## jwhendy (Mar 23, 2009)

I'm very interested in the verdict on the AR5008. I have a Macbook with an AR5418 (which I've come to understand is synonymous/based on the AR5008 chipset), but it does not currently work. This led me to distrust the hardware notes, as either the AR5418/AR5008 are not the AR5005VL.

The only explanation I heard was that the hardware notes list compatible PCI nics, and the AR5418/AR5008 I have is PCI Express. Somone thought this card would work for me if I csup-ed to RELENG_7, but I haven't tried yet.

I've only had success with 7.0 and 7.1 by using ndisgen to create a module from a WinXP set of drivers... and this only worked for me in i386, not amd64, which is what I want to run. I've since given up and just deal with Ethernet.

If anyone knows if the AR5418/AR5008 is not working, that would be excellent to know!

-John


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## melkov (Mar 28, 2009)

I've acquired an AR5418-based card yesterday and it was a pity that my relatively fresh FreeBSD RELENG_7 kernel (updated around 15th February) didn't see it.

Whats even scarier, sys/dev/ath/ath_hal directory didn't contain any reminder of AR5418 but AR5416. Yet that 0x0024 define
#define AR5416_DEVID_PCIE  0x0024          /* AR5416 PCI-E (XB) Owl */
matched `chip=0x0024168c' in pciconf output.

Then I went browsing svn and found a commit 189720 to dev/ath at 12th March that actually enabled the use of sys/dev/ath/ath_hal. As hoped, after updating the kernel the card works and is displayed as <Atheros 5416>


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## melkov (Mar 28, 2009)

P.S.
`option AH_SUPPORT_AR5416' must be added to kernel config (as mentioned in UPDATING).


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## jwhendy (Mar 30, 2009)

SWEET! I will check this out.

Pardon my extreme, extreme newness... by updating the kernel, do I just update the config and do 'make buildkernel' and 'make installkernel' (referring to the location of the config in the command as well), or do I need to do anything with csup as well?

Coming from linux, all I needed to worry about was getting the kernel source, altering the config, and compiling. I know that there are other things involved with FreeBSD, but have not gotten that far in my learning yet...


Thanks for any input,
John


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## trasz@ (Mar 30, 2009)

Get Atheros.


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## tangram (Mar 30, 2009)

jwhendy said:
			
		

> Pardon my extreme, extreme newness... by updating the kernel, do I just update the config and do 'make buildkernel' and 'make installkernel' (referring to the location of the config in the command as well), or do I need to do anything with csup as well?
> Thanks for any input,
> John



All you need to know: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/kernelconfig-building.html


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## melkov (Mar 30, 2009)

*jwhendy*, by updating my kernel I basically meant `make update' command within /usr/src (provided that csup is already tuned up and tag=RELENG_7 is configured).
Relevant handbook chapter is: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/updating-upgrading.html


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## jwhendy (Apr 14, 2009)

Well, I don't know if I did everything right... but I can ping with my wireless card now! My process (both for anyone to offer suggestions of how I could have done this better/simpler, and for anyone else new like me who reads this thread):

- copied the /usr/share/examples/cvsup/standard-supfile into /root (I only wanted to update the source, not ports)
- edited the file to contain a US mirror and tag=RELENG_7
- ran 'csup /root/supfile'
- copied /usr/src/amd64/conf/GENERIC to /root/MYKERNEL and created a symbolic link to it in /usr/src/amd64/conf
- edited the kernel config in /root to make sure that AH_SUPPORT_AR5416 was present and found that it was already there. I will probably go back and tune this file, as I have never created a custom kernel, but for now I just wanted to get wireless up
- booted into single user mode
- cd'd into /usr/src and ran 'make buildworld'
- when finished ran 'make buildkernel KERNCONF=MYKERNEL
- when finished ran 'make installkernel KERNCONF=MYKERNEL'
- rebooted, choosing single user mode again
- ran 'mergemaster -p'
- ran 'make installworld'
- ran 'mergemaster'
- rebooted

When rebooting this last time, I did 'dmesg|grep ath' and saw with joy that AR5416 was picked up! I ran 'sysinstall' and configured the card that way, as it was the easiest and quickest way I knew. When finished with that, I did 'ping http://www.google.com' and got results!

Thanks for following up with this thread with the pertinent info on the updates to the source for this card. Much appreciated! This was my last reservation about FreeBSD vs. linux... I'm FBSD all the way now!


-John


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## NuShrike (May 17, 2009)

Thanks for this thread.  I replaced my DWL-G520 (AR5212) card with the DLink DWA-552 (AR5416), updated my kernel from 7.1 to 7.2 (which has the necessary AH_SUPPORT_AR5416 setting) and it works nicely now!

No more ath0: device timeout errors now, although some new ones:
ath0: hardware error; resetting
...
ath0: stuck beacon; resetting (bmiss count 4)

However, solved the WiFi problems with my Windows Mobile 6 devices with power-savings set at best instead of forcing full power previously.  Even the wireless lag problems with the Mac Book Pro is fixed!  Last time it worked this normally was FreeBSD 6.x.


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## MrFollies (Jun 29, 2009)

NuShrike said:
			
		

> No more ath0: device timeout errors now, although some new ones:
> ath0: hardware error; resetting
> ...
> ath0: stuck beacon; resetting (bmiss count 4)
> ...



I see the same errors.   Are you saying that you were able to resolve the "ath0: stuck beacon" errors somehow?   If so, I'd love to know how because I see these every second when the ath0 interface is up.


```
ath0: <Atheros 5212> mem 0xd8400000-0xd840ffff at device 1.0 on pci4
ath0: [ITHREAD]
ath0: WARNING: using obsoleted if_watchdog interface
ath0: Ethernet address: 00:14:6c:2e:e8:2d
ath0: mac 7.9 phy 4.5 radio 5.6
ath0: stuck beacon; resetting (bmiss count 4)
ath0: stuck beacon; resetting (bmiss count 4)
ath0: stuck beacon; resetting (bmiss count 4)
ath0: stuck beacon; resetting (bmiss count 4)
.
.
.
```

I upgraded to get ZFS v13 which is important to me, but now I have lost my AP I would really like to get this going.


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## melkov (Jul 3, 2009)

*MrFollies*, I think that the point of *NuShrike*'s post is that ()he replaced AR5212 with AR5416 and upgraded to 7.2. Each method alone might not help.


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