BWN(4)

NAME
bwn - Broadcom BCM43xx IEEE 802.11b/g wireless network driver

SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

device siba_bwn
device bwn
device wlan
device wlan_amrr
device firmware

Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):

    if_bwn_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION
The bwn driver provides support for Broadcom BCM43xx based PCI/CardBus network adapters.

It supports station and monitor mode operation. Only one virtual interface may be configured at any time. For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

This driver requires firmware to be loaded before it will work. The ports/net/bwn-firmware-kmod port needs to be installed before ifconfig(8) will work. Most cases you need to use bwn_v4_ucode module but if you are a LP (low power) PHY user please uses bwn_v4_lp_ucode module.

HARDWARE
The bwn driver supports Broadcom BCM43xx based wireless devices, including:

Card | Chip | Bus | Standard
Apple Airport Extreme | BCM4318 | PCI | b/g
ASUS WL-138g | BCM4318 | PCI | b/g
Buffalo WLI-CB-G54S | BCM4318 | CardBus | b/g
Dell Wireless 1390 BCM4311 Mini PCI | b/g
Dell Wireless 1470 | BCM4318 | Mini PCI | b/g
Dell Truemobile 1400 | BCM4309 | Mini PCI | b/g
HP Compaq 6715b | BCM4312 | PCI | b/g
HP nx6125 | BCM4319 | PCI | b/g
Linksys WPC54G Ver 3 | BCM4318 | CardBus | b/g
Linksys WPC54GS Ver 2 | BCM4318 | CardBus | b/g
US Robotics 5411 | BCM4318 | CardBus | b/g

Users of older Broadcom chipsets (BCM4301, BCM4303 and BCM4306 rev 2) must use bwi(4) because the v4 version of the firmware does not support these chips. The newer firmware is too big to fit into these old chips.

EXAMPLES
Join an existing BSS network (i.e., connect to an access point):

    ifconfig wlan create wlandev bwn0 inet 192.168.0.20 \
        netmask 0xffffff00

Join a specific BSS network with network name “my_net”:

    ifconfig wlan create wlandev bwn0 ssid my_net up

Join a specific BSS network with 64-bit WEP encryption:

    ifconfig wlan create wlandev bwn0 ssid my_net \
            wepmode on wepkey 0x1234567890 weptxkey 1 up

LOADER TUNABLES
Tunables can be set at the loader(8) prompt before booting the kernel or stored in loader.conf(5).

hw.bwn.msi_disable
    This tunable disables MSI support on the hardware. The default value is 0.

hw.bwn.usedma
    This tunable enables DMA operations on the hardware. If the value is 0, PIO mode would be used. The default value is 1.

SEE ALSO
arp(4), bwi(4), cardbus(4), intro(4), pci(4), wlan(4), wlan_amrr(4), ifconfig(8), wpa_supplicant(8)

HISTORY
The bwn driver first appeared in FreeBSD 8.1.

AUTHORS
-nosplit The bwn driver was written by Weongyo Jeong <weongyo@FreeBSD.org>.

CAVEATS
Some LP PHY devices have DMA operation problems that in that case try to use PIO mode.