OpenBSD Journal

iwx(4) gains 11ac 80MHz channel support

Contributed by rueda on from the wi-five dept.

Following a request-for-testing thread on tech@, Stefan Sperling (stsp@) has committed some IEEE 802.11ac support to iwx(4):

CVSROOT:	/cvs
Module name:	src
Changes by:	stsp@cvs.openbsd.org	2022/03/14 09:08:50

Modified files:
	sys/dev/pci    : if_iwx.c if_iwxreg.h if_iwxvar.h 

Log message:
Add initial support for 802.11ac (VHT) to the iwx(4) driver.

This makes it possible to use 80MHz channels and VHT-specific MCS.
Other 11ac features remain disabled for now.

Tested:
ax200: Matthias Schmidt, phessler, dv, kevlo, Joel Carnat, hrvoje, jmc, stsp
ax201: mlarkin, stsp
iwm (regression testing): stsp

As always, thanks Stefan!

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By d. c. (d.c.) on

    THX for your great work!

    As there is just little wireless cards by Intel available in miniPCIe package (if there are any), it's of a limited usability for me and my PCEngines routers, but it is always nice to hear.

    Any notion of similar features being available for Atheros cards in near future? athn(4) mentions, there might be some 802.11 stack work needed - is that still true?

    Comments
    1. By Stefan Sperling (stsp) stsp@openbsd.org on http://stsp.name

      Is is possible to use M.2 cards in an APU with a suitable adapter.

      While iwx(4) was in early development I was using an APU with an AX200 card inside as my hardware testbed. Only AX201 cards won't work because they require Intel-proprietary CNVi support in the CPU, which the APU does not have.

    2. By Stefan Sperling (stsp) stsp@openbsd.org on http://stsp.name

      Regarding athn(4), yes, it is still true. We will need an A-MPDU scheduler in net80211 to add proper 11n support with Tx aggregation to this driver. On Intel cards such scheduling is handled by firmware.

      Comments
      1. By d.c. (d.c.) on

        Thank you for your explanation and a hint. It's greatly appreciated!

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