Hello, I began testing the opensource firmware on b43 when running ad-hoc mode and I faced a strange problem that drove me to investigate about how ad-hoc mode is implemented inside the wireless stack. Note that what follows holds for both Broadcom original firmware and opensource one, however I did all these tests switching back to original BCM firmware.
It turned out that Apple Macs with 4328 hardware (bot a/b/g and n) running different version of OSX never succeed in joining ad-hoc networks initiated by b43 while they can join without problems ad-hoc networks run by ath5k (with initiated or run I mean "the first node that is configured with that SSID"). I attach a complete description of the tests at the end of this message. I then captured some traffic and it seems that b43 never sends beacon when initiating ad-hoc networks, it just sends probes to itself and responds to broadcast probe requests. Note that ath5k instead sends beacons as long as it is the first node. Probably I'm missing something, so just responding to broadcast probes could be a correct alternative procedure to advertise ad-hoc network, however this seems to be the only difference to explain the different behavior of newer Apple Macs when joining ath5k or b43 ad-hoc initiated networks. Please note that if I invert roles (ad-hoc initiated by those Apple Macs, b43 joining the network) everything is fine, so this is not an issue involving send and receive operations, nodes do not have communication problems. Has anyone ever experienced such issues? Is it correct to not send beacon when starting an ad-hoc network? I did some tests and OSX does send beacon when initiating an ad-hoc network (as ath5k does). Cheers, -FG ----- testbed scenarios When I initiate an ad-hoc network on a Linux PC with a 4306 card, I can't join it using any of my Apple Macs equipped with BCM hardware. I tried two different Apple, one is a new MacBook Pro with 4328 BCM N- PHY, the other is a two years old iMac 17 with a a/b/g 4328 BCM hardware. The Kernel I used on the x86 PC was 2.6.29-rc2-wl, the firmware was the original Broadcom ucode5, I did not use encryption. I did extensive testing but I never succeeded. I then tried the same setup, using this time a 4318 card to initiate the ad-hoc network on the Linux box, and I got the same behavior. Finally I repeated the experiment this time initiating the ad-hoc network with a Linksys WRT54GL (BCM 4320), same result, the two Apple Macs never joined the network, they reported a generic error and nothing more. Please note that if I repeat the experiments using a MacBook Pro with Atheros hardware everything works fine. Also all other Linux PC I have do not have problems in joining these b43-run ad-hoc networks independently of the kind of Atheros or BCM hardware they use. _______________________________________________ Bcm43xx-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/bcm43xx-dev
