# Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260



## decsis (Oct 14, 2013)

Hello,

I got my new Lenovo T440s and was very sad to see that not even the freebsd FreeBSD setup works with the Intel® Dual Band Wireless-N 7260 card.  Is there any way I could make freebsd FreeBSD work with that WiFi card?

Thanks a lot!


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## decsis (Oct 16, 2013)

Is there really no way to do that? I so don't want to switch to Linux just because I can't use that stupid wireless card.


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## Ghwomb (Apr 10, 2014)

*Re: Intel® Dual Band Wireless-N 7260*

I have the same problem. From what I can find there is open source drivers. But they have not been ported to FreeBSD, since it is not listed in the man page for the Intel wireless drivers.

According to a mailing list the portingseems to go forward. But I guess we just have to wait for it to stabilize first. Also, as far as I understand it, the new driver will land in iwl(4), not iwn.

For your information: I'm not a developer or anything like it. This is just what I could gather from Google.


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## Ghwomb (Apr 10, 2014)

*Re: IntelÃ® Dual Band Wireless-N 7260*

Also this bug report might be the place to watch.


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## Drohne (Sep 20, 2014)

It is now end of September, anno 2014. And still this popular NIC does not get any attention by FreeBSD developers! Lenovo's notebooks are mostly equipped with this NIC by now and it is a shame that this wireless NIC hasn't been made working by now. Most Linux distributions I tried on my personal Lenovo E540 with this N-7260 WiFi adapter support it and work well.


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## adrian@ (Oct 17, 2014)

Hi,

We're working on it. Unlike the Linux Intel WiFi support, there's no-one paid from any company to maintain any WiFi driver in FreeBSD, so it's totally a free time community effort.  I finally have a couple of people willing to help me do the 7260 port  based on both what appeared in OpenBSD and what's in Linux.

Since we need 11n (and eventually 11ac) we can't just take the OpenBSD driver into FreeBSD.

This is all a community effort and relies on people doing active development. There's plenty of hardware available (and it's both cheap and plentiful!) - but we need more active 802.11 driver and stack developers.

Thanks!

-adrian
(WiFi maintainer)


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## fmayhar (Nov 2, 2014)

adrian@ said:


> This is all a community effort and relies on people doing active development. There's plenty of hardware available (and it's both cheap and plentiful!) - but we need more active 802.11 driver and stack developers.


Thanks for the effort, Adrian, many of us appreciate it.  I'm looking at purchasing an HP laptop with this very NIC (and no other choices, sigh).  Do you have a time frame for when the driver might be available for testing?


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## adrian@ (Nov 4, 2014)

There's still no timeline, sorry. I'm trying to find the time.


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## ikbendeman (Dec 12, 2014)

Yes. a lot of you _L_inux folks weren't around for the days when _L_inux didn't have any funding either and there was a lot less hardware around then too!

People didn't jump on the *nix bandwagon until _L_inux became less Unix-like and more like Windows.


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## fmayhar (Dec 25, 2014)

ikbendeman said:


> Yes. a lot of you _L_inux folks weren't around for the days when _L_inux didn't have any funding either and there was a lot less hardware around then too!
> 
> People didn't jump on the *nix bandwagon until _L_inux became less Unix-like and more like Windows.



Um.  This is a BSD forum.  Specifically a _Free_BSD forum.  And many of us around here have been using Unix or Unix-like systems since before Linux was even a gleam in Torvalds' eye, and, in my case, since before you were born.


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## ikbendeman (Dec 25, 2014)

Yes. I'm aware. He was talking about Linux, and yes, I might be younger than you but I've still been using one *nix or the other since at least 15 or 20 years ago so you don't have to be ageist or act like you're better. I started with Linux back then and hadn't heard of BSD but I was merely stating a fact and confirming what Adrian said because I remember when Linux didn't have any corporate sponsorship and hardware support was limited. Calm down.


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## ikbendeman (Dec 25, 2014)

I've also been a member on this forum longer than you so I'm pretty aware of what the forum is about. I'm also aware of the new BSD users coming over from Linux.

Back to the original post, have you tried NDIS? I know, it's not ideal but some are content with it. I've never personally used it but I've read the man page for the kernel module and it seems pretty straight forward


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## adrian@ (Jan 6, 2015)

So on the plus side, I have the thing probing, attaching, and loading in an initial firmware. That required way too much blood and tears.

I'm going to tidy up what I have and then see about getting calibration and scan support working. That'll be enough for people to at least try it and tell me if it's panicing or not. It won't do traffic but it'll be good for debugging.

Stay tuned…


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## Arisna (Feb 7, 2015)

I saw this message highlighted on the Dragonfly BSD Digest today and thought it might be of interest to anyone who's watching this thread.  Support for Intel 7260 WiFi cards has just been added to OpenBSD -current under the driver name iwm(4).  I assume this is what adrian@ has been working with recently.  Thank you for your hard work on porting this driver!

http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=142325218626853&w=2


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## jfrey (Feb 8, 2015)

I'm looking at getting a Laptop to run FreeBSD.

From what I've gathered so far is it is probably cheaper and easier to get something (for now) that is supported with dev/ath_hal(4)/AR9300.

A lot of them  ~$40 on used on Amazon or Ebay.


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## adrian@ (Feb 15, 2015)

Hi!

I've made a little progress on the 7260 driver. I spent some time debugging issues with firmware command handling. I'm almost at the point where I'm ready to read the channel list from the firmware and setup the state net80211 needs to think the thing is a real wifi NIC.

After that it's calibration, reset handling and channel scanning. Then, hopefully, I can make a start on association and RX handling. TX is .. complicated.


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## npajkovsky (Feb 22, 2015)

adrian@ can you send me patch for testing? I'd like help you a bit.


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## lockheed (Mar 7, 2015)

I should mention that it would be beneficial if the driver would be made to ignore the Regulatory Domain information contained in the card's EEPROM. The reason for that is that Intel disabled AP mode for those cards on channel 12 and 13, and on every channel of the 5GHz range. 

More info on doing this for an Atheros chip can be found here:
https://sites.google.com/site/twisteroidambassador/linux/ath-user-regd


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## scottro (Nov 28, 2015)

As nothing's been done since February, I wonder (without having any idea of how easy or hard it is) if it would be better to at least port over the driver from OpenBSD or whatever, so that someone could get online and possibly find this thread?  As it stands, unless you go and buy a wireless USB, or a USB to RJ45 adapter, you'd be dead in the water.  With a driver, even if it didn't work with N and so on,  at least the user could find out why their wireless seems so slow.


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## spython01 (Jan 26, 2016)

Hi Everyone -- As part of my new adventures into FreeBSD, I recently installed 10.2-RELEASE onto my Thinkpad T450s.  Like the original poster, I have an Intel Wireless 7265 which FreeBSD unfortunately does not seem to recognize (nothing shows us when I run `ifconfig | grep -B3 -i wireless` as directed by the FreeBSD Handbook).  The apparent good news is that 11.0-CURRENT seems to include the iwm(4) driver which does support "Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 3160/7260/7265 IEEE 802.11ac network adapters".

Is there any chance that this driver can be backported into 10.2-RELEASE or is my only option to install 11.0-CURRENT?

Thanks!


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## protocelt (Jan 26, 2016)

spython01 said:


> Is there any chance that this driver can be backported into 10.2-RELEASE or is my only option to install 11.0-CURRENT?



My suspicion is that the driver(s) won't be backported, at least not in time for 10.3-RELEASE, which is due to release in March. If you can wait a few more months longer and or work around it, 11.0-RELEASE should also be available and supported, which will have the driver available.


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## spython01 (Jan 26, 2016)

protocelt said:


> My suspicion is that the driver(s) won't be backported, at least not in time for 10.3-RELEASE, which is due to release in March.


I was afraid of that.  Have the Hardware Notes for 10.3-RELEASE been published yet?


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## bcomputerguy (Sep 30, 2016)

Hi can I bump this thread. I have been looking everywhere for some type of MINI PCIE wifi card to replace the Broadcomm one that came with this macbook pro.

Because of where I live a lot of chips are hard to find over here. I did manage to find an OEM that sells
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 for sale.

I know it's been said numerous times that the Atheros chips have the best support but finding those here in Taiwan is pretty close to impossible. [If anyone has any information on that, you can post here for me to check out] but with that being said, I am running FreeBSD 11RC3 so is this intel 7260 supported?


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## antranigv (Sep 30, 2016)

hi bcomputerguy ! according to this iwm(4) manual page, the 7260 is supported. I have the 8260 and it works fine with iwm on FreeBSD 11.0


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## bcomputerguy (Sep 30, 2016)

Oh awesome, I just found 3 devices that I think might be supported.

Bointec DPE809-AA included Atheros AR9485 and AR3012 is a 802.11bgn 1x1,plus Bluetooth 4.0 solution.
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 AC 7260 7260NGW
Bointec DPE909-AA Atheros AR9462

There are two Atheros chips which according to the guys around here is the best supported by FreeBSD but also there's the intel device.

The main reason why I would personally lean towards the intel is because when I took out the Broadcomm chip from this laptop. This Broadcomm chip had 3 antenna connectors.

and the intel is the only one that I've noticed with the three antenna connectors.




 

but it seems the device only supports station mode.


How did you find the 7260 being supported? For example I was looking if this device is supported

Atheros AR9462; googling lead me to the auth_hal man page but when I look in there I don't see any reference to the AR9462 so how can I be sure the device will be supported?

For example ath_hal seems to go up to about 9380 and newer devices aren't supported?


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## antranigv (Sep 30, 2016)

Well, the iwm(4) man page says so  I'll try to find some laptop around here with the same chip, and try on it, and let you know if it works. but I think it's better if you try, and buy it if it works ) oh, but I'd rather buy an atheros than an Intel :3


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## bcomputerguy (Sep 30, 2016)

Yes I honestly would rather risk the Atheros than the Intel to be honest. The problem w/ try before I buy is that it's an online retailer so I will have to order it and see if they offer a refund. I will order one of the Atheros; it'll be three business days until delivery.


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## Phishfry (Oct 2, 2016)

This page says the AR9462 should work
https://wiki.freebsd.org/dev/ath_hal(4)/HardwareSupport


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## Phishfry (Oct 2, 2016)

If your laptop is wired for 3x antennas then consider this AR9380 option. AR5BXB112 - This is full length mPCIe module with3x MIMO cheap on bay. Was used in Apple products most noted as Airport Extreme card. Quite worthy for around $15 bucks US
http://www.ebay.com/itm/252506432044

Half card version is much costlier at $35-40 with AR5BHB112 featuring 3x MIMO
http://www.ebay.com/itm/271671611590


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## Phishfry (Oct 2, 2016)

Are you sure you can use just any old wifi card with your laptop? Some have bios whitelists that only allow certain branded devices.


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## bcomputerguy (Oct 4, 2016)

To be honest, I am not sure. The chip will be here in a few days and I'll test and see. But in all honesty, I'm going to put mac os back on here and sell this thing.

It's a real pain to deal with.


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## ShruggingAtlas (Oct 29, 2016)

I have been using a Dell XPS 13 with an Intel 7260 Wifi chipset without problems. Apart from needed to ALT+F4 during installation to do
`kldload if_iwm`

Everything seems to work as usual on FreeBSD 11.


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## Mart Mangus (Dec 7, 2016)

Hi! I have Intel 7260 wifi working well, but
has anyone got the Bluetooth (also part of the 7260 chip) functional?


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 7, 2016)

Note that this thread started three years ago.


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## scottro (Jul 5, 2017)

And to answer,  another 7 months later, since it's one of the few hits with some information if googling the card on FreeBSD, in FreeBSD-11 the 7260 works with the iwm driver. I have a yoga2 pro, and upgraded the card to a 7260 dualband and it works, but though it connects to a 5GHz access point, it seems to only use 802.11a, getting the same speeds that I got with the non-dual band card.  Linux seems to do a lot better, coming close to wired speed on downloads (but my Spectrum account is supposedly only 300 Mbs and both wired and 5GHz wireless go over that).
Doing transfer between machines, it gives me the same 2-5MB/s that I get with the 2.4 GHz, whereas in Linux, it's closer to 40-50 MB/s.  This holds for both FreeBSD-11 and CURRENT. 

Anyway, the card does work, though not as well as it does in Linux.


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