diff --git a/website/content/en/status/report-2024-10-2024-12/lkpi-wireless.adoc b/website/content/en/status/report-2024-10-2024-12/lkpi-wireless.adoc new file mode 100644 --- /dev/null +++ b/website/content/en/status/report-2024-10-2024-12/lkpi-wireless.adoc @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +=== LinuxKPI 802.11 Wireless Update + +Links: + +link:https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/showdependencytree.cgi?id=277512&hide_resolved=0[Categorised Wireless Problem Reports] URL: link:https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/showdependencytree.cgi?id=277512&hide_resolved=0[] + +link:https://people.freebsd.org/~bz/wireless/[Overview of drivers] URL: link:https://people.freebsd.org/~bz/wireless/[] + +Contact: Bjoern A. Zeeb + +Contact: The FreeBSD wireless mailing list + +With multiple wireless projects ongoing, this report focuses on the efforts using permissively licensed Linux wireless drivers mostly unmodified on FreeBSD. + +Drivers previously committed directly to FreeBSD src.git were retroactively imported in vendor branches and merged to main. +This makes maintainance and identifying local changes a lot easier. +The man:iwlwifi[4], man:rtw88[4], and man:rtw89[4] drivers got updated in main to match Linux 6.11. + +The man:rtw89[4] driver, which had been ported and in the tree for a while, got connected to the build. +Thanks for that goes to the efforts of the community finding two bugs preventing it from working before. + +Wireless firmware in ports got updated and a release flavor was added. +The release building framework got enhanced to install the firmware packages onto the release media. +The installer grew support to run man:fwget[8] on the installed system to install the firmware. +This all together ensures that (wireless) drivers with external firmware can be used from the installer and right away on the installed system without the need for alternate connectivity. +With the framework in place for man:iwlwifi[4], man:rtw88[4], and man:rtw89[4] support for more drivers can easily be added in the future. +These changes shipped the first time with 14.2-RELEASE. + +Having a lot of these requested necessities out of the way, time was spent on HT(802.11n) and VHT(802.11ac) improvements to the LinuxKPI framework synching between driver and net80211. +Hardware crypto offload got sorted along with A-MPDU RX/BA offload right at the end of the year. +Both were needed towards the goal to achieve higher throughput with man:iwlwifi[4]. + +A half-year old bug, which stayed unnoticed preventing packets to be sent beyond scanning with man:rtw88[4] in main and stable/14, received a patch to fix the situation. + +Work for the first quarter of 2025 should include: + +* finishing basic HT and VHT support, and +* looking at finishing the code for generic LinuxKPI 802.11 suspend/resume support + +Sponsor: The FreeBSD Foundation