Solved bcm4356 with lenovo T460

C

cduret

I am thinking coming back to freebsd which I quit to linux after having my new T460 lenovo few years ago.

I would like to know if I have any chance to use my broadcom wifi interface.

my device :
Code: 
04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Limited BCM4356 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43ec] (rev 02)

I use the brcmfmac on linux with success

cheers
Cyrille
 
cduret said:
I use the brcmfmac on linux with success
Click to expand...

Yes, Linux added support for 14e4:43ec around 3.17; however, as far as I know, no support is available (like for most 802.11ac/5G NICs) on FreeBSD.
Given Broadcom, unlike many other vendors (Atheros, Intel, Realtek, Ralink) is by no cirmunstances willing to cooperate with FOSS developers, by opening up documentation regarding their chips and employing kernel hackers, and providing the fact FreeBSD has a considerably more limited (by several orders of magnitudes) manpower compared to Linux, I can figure out spending tons of time to retro-engineer corresponding Windows drivers for BCM chips is not exactly among FreeBSD devs priority.

Generally speaking, if you want *
BSD wifi support, you won't have much luck with Broadcom (unless it's very old hardware we're speaking about); FreeBSD goes as far as BCM43225 at the current state. A considerably broader support is available for Intel, Atheros and Realtek chips
 
cduret said:
Sadly I will stick with linux few years more

thanks for answer ;-)
Click to expand...

There's actually several working USB wifi micro dongles, I've used some with *BSD/Illumos over the years, with acceptable performance and reliability; obviously they
do not compare with internal NICs from a convenience point of view, have a shorter range, and keep a USB port occupied.

Old laptops, embedded ARM SoCs, Sun workstations are only some of the cheap ways of trying FreeBSD (aside VMs).
 
I am not sure yet but it appears that I can change my wifi card for this one and it could resolve my problems :

Code: 
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/dual-band-wireless-ac-8260-brief.html
 
Sensucht94 said:
Yes, Linux added support for 14e4:43ec around 3.17; however, as far as I know, no support is available (like for most 802.11ac/5G NICs) on FreeBSD.
Given Broadcom, unlike many other vendors (Atheros, Intel, Realtek, Ralink) is by no cirmunstances willing to cooperate with FOSS developers, by opening up documentation regarding their chips and employing kernel hackers, and providing the fact FreeBSD has a considerably more limited (by several orders of magnitudes) manpower compared to Linux, I can figure out spending tons of time to retro-engineer corresponding Windows drivers for BCM chips is not exactly among FreeBSD devs priority.

Generally speaking, if you want *
BSD wifi support, you won't have much luck with Broadcom (unless it's very old hardware we're speaking about); FreeBSD goes as far as BCM43225 at the current state. A considerably broader support is available for Intel, Atheros and Realtek chips
Click to expand...

I have a laptop with Broadcom BT and wifi. Version BCM43142 14e4:4365. This does not use the brma (blacklisted) for the kernel driver but instead WL. Using Linux I am required to recompile the kernel driver. (just like for VMware) to create a compatible WL.ko kernel driver.
In researching Freebsd the documentation claims the bcn driver should work with Broadcom chip.

Part II is that I discovered that when using BT to transfer files while wifi is active it slows the BT transfer down to a crawl. Therefore, I purchased an USB wifi dongle rtl8811cu/rtl8812bu. This is a higher speed wifi rated at 600 MBS. I would hope they would use the same driver as the 300 MBS chip and similar rtl chips. I have the Linux driver source for the rtl USB wifi.

My goal is to find an OS that includes the kernel driver already complied in each new release.
 
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