FreeBSD 15 - iwm wifi - hello 2005 speeds...

ahhyes · Saturday at 5:42 AM

Not much to say really except "DISAPPOINTING".... Decided to try out v15 on a Thinkpad T480s

From the iwm() man-page:

BUGS
Currently, iwm only supports 802.11a/b/g modes. It will not associate
to access points that are configured to operate only in 802.11n/ac
modes.

And yup, surely enough ifconfig shows that I am stuck in 2005 speed mode.
I am guessing nobody is interested in fixing this iwm "BUG" either..

The speeds are so awful I have to put youtube into < 1080p so it wont buffer all the time.

angry_vincent · Saturday at 6:09 AM

I do not know what wifi card is in T480S. i have T480 ( not S ). it had intel 8265 wifi card. i just swapped it for intel ax210 wifi and new iwx driver that is in 15 gives fantastic speed.

ahhyes · Saturday at 6:14 AM

One thing I spotted also in the ifconfig output was OFDM/36. Using -powersave to turn off powersaving changed that to OFDM/54 but the speeds still max out at around 2.3MB/s - awful.
I guess that driver is just horrible :/

ahhyes · Saturday at 6:23 AM

angry_vincent said:
I do not know what wifi card is in T480S. i have T480 ( not S ). it had intel 8265 wifi card. i just swapped it for intel ax210 wifi and new iwx driver that is in 15 gives fantastic speed.

ahhhhhhh - thank you - this might be my way out of the problem - I see them on ebay for cheap.

angry_vincent · Saturday at 7:18 AM

If you decide to go with iwx driver and new card then make sure you blacklisted both iwm and if_iwlwifi drivers as the latter one has precedence over iwx. and install iwlwifi-ax210 firmware ( i cannot tell exact pkg name out of my head - pkg search can give it ).

Perceval · Saturday at 8:07 PM

I don't remember well, but iwm is used for old hardware and is not compatible with ac speed.
Indeed, that's easier to switch to an AX210.
You might check if your current wifi card has the correct driver and firmware, mine stayed on 14.3 version even after 15.0 upgrade - it did work but I was running strange behaviour before noticying the version mismatch.

scottro · Saturday at 9:13 PM

My Thinkpad, T495, has an Intel card that doesn't get the newer speeds. It has an AC9x6x card. But I also have a Beelink SER5, with an AX200 Intel card, and that one has wireless speeds equal to the speed in Linux.

ahhyes · Sunday at 12:31 AM

Perceval said:
I don't remember well, but iwm is used for old hardware and is not compatible with ac speed.
Indeed, that's easier to switch to an AX210.
You might check if your current wifi card has the correct driver and firmware, mine stayed on 14.3 version even after 15.0 upgrade - it did work but I was running strange behaviour before noticying the version mismatch.

It's not all _that_ old (the 8265); certainly capable of more than 'g' speeds and has a 5Ghz radio

I had been using Linux on this same laptop with the 8265 that is on it and was getting 300Mbit speeds - nice and fast and very usable - far far better than what the iwm driver on FreeBSD is giving me (which is permanently stuck in 'g' mode due its limitations/bugs) and only able to achieve throughput of 2.3MB/s (which is making the task of trying to rsync a big load of data onto the laptop painful also)

I have an AX210 wifi module on the way so hopefully it will improve the experience.

ahhyes · Sunday at 12:36 AM

The 8265 is 802.11ac capable actually - so no idea why the iwm driver is used for driving this hardware since it has nasty limitations

angry_vincent · Sunday at 3:04 PM

ahhyes said:
The 8265 is 802.11ac capable actually - so no idea why the iwm driver is used for driving this hardware since it has nasty limitations

That is correct however iwm driver has no 802.11ac support for the card . I used net/wifibox to workaround this limitation it is fantastic piece of software. but getting newer card and using new driver is much easier. I am little bit grumpy about the state of matter as OpenBSD ( iwx is their original work ) is way better in certain hardware support. their drm drivers are also much newer.it would ne nice to have some sort of work for gpu drivers like with iwx.

Perceval · Sunday at 4:50 PM

ahhyes said:
It's not all _that_ old (the 8265); certainly capable of more than 'g' speeds and has a 5Ghz radio I had been using Linux on this same laptop with the 8265 that is on it and was getting 300Mbit speeds - nice and fast and very usable - far far better than what the iwm driver on FreeBSD is giving me (which is permanently stuck in 'g' mode due its limitations/bugs) and only able to achieve throughput of 2.3MB/s (which is making the task of trying to rsync a big load of data onto the laptop painful also)

I have an AX210 wifi module on the way so hopefully it will improve the experience.

Sorry, I wasn't saying the Wifi card was old, I was talking about iwm(4).
I changed my thinkpad's 8265 to an AX210, I can't remember which driver was used, but it seems that the 8265 is compatible with iwlwifi(4) according to this: https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFi/Iwlwifi
Quoted (please note this is an old written stuff, the AC speed might be fine today ?):

Code:

Testing
I have an iwm(4) supported device and want to try iwlwifi(4)
If you have an iwm(4) supported device, you will need to detach the iwm(4) and attach iwlwifi. Please check pciconf -l for your wireless device and remember (or copy and paste later) the first bit.

% pciconf -l | grep iwm
iwm0@pci0:3:0:0:        class=0x028000 rev=0x78 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x24fd subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x0010

After loading the iwlwifi kernel module run the following commands (replacing the device selector with what you found for your computer):

devctl detach pci0:3:0:0
devctl set driver pci0:3:0:0 iwlwifi

That should do the trick.

To ensure that iwlwifi(4) is loaded after subsequent reboots, disable the automatic loading of iwm(4) by devmatch(8). Add the following to /boot/loader.conf:

devmatch_blocklist="if_iwm"

victort · Sunday at 6:48 PM

My T460 has an AC8260.

On 15 it didn’t even try to load with iwm. I simply added “devmatch_blocklist=“if_iwm” and it auto loaded the iwlwifi with a/c mode.

ahhyes · Tuesday at 5:48 AM

Well, the plot thickens - replaced the wifi module with the AX210.

I am still stuck on 'g' speeds :/ ChatGPT suggests that its not connecting to 5Ghz radio because my wifi network is using DFS channels, note DFS channels (52–144) absent:

[me@laptop ~]$ ifconfig wlan0 list chan
Channel 1 : 2412 MHz 11g ht Channel 11 : 2462 MHz 11g ht
Channel 2 : 2417 MHz 11g ht Channel 36 : 5180 MHz 11a vht
Channel 3 : 2422 MHz 11g ht Channel 40 : 5200 MHz 11a vht
Channel 4 : 2427 MHz 11g ht Channel 44 : 5220 MHz 11a vht
Channel 5 : 2432 MHz 11g ht Channel 48 : 5240 MHz 11a vht
Channel 6 : 2437 MHz 11g ht Channel 149 : 5745 MHz 11a vht
Channel 7 : 2442 MHz 11g ht Channel 153 : 5765 MHz 11a vht
Channel 8 : 2447 MHz 11g ht Channel 157 : 5785 MHz 11a vht
Channel 9 : 2452 MHz 11g ht Channel 161 : 5805 MHz 11a vht
Channel 10 : 2457 MHz 11g ht Channel 165 : 5825* MHz 11a

ifconfig output (partially redacted for privacy reasons), I had the interface in a down state as it was causing a conflict while I had the ethernet cable plugged into its side (so it will show down/not associated):

wlan0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=0
ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
inet x.x.x.x netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast x.x.x.x
groups: wlan
ssid "" channel 1 (2412 MHz 11g ht/40+)
regdomain FCC country US authmode WPA2/802.11i privacy ON
deftxkey UNDEF AES-CCM 3:128-bit txpower 30 bmiss 10 scanvalid 60
bgscan bgscanintvl 300 bgscanidle 250 roam:rssi 7 roam:rate MCS 1
protmode CTS ampdulimit 8k ampdudensity 4 -amsdutx amsdurx shortgi
-stbc -ldpc -uapsd wme roaming MANUAL
parent interface: iwx0
media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect (autoselect)
status: no carrier
nd6 options=23<PERFORMNUD,ACCEPT_RTADV,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>

from dmesg:

iwx0: <Wi-Fi 6 AX210> mem 0xdc100000-0xdc103fff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci3
iwx0: hw rev 0x420, fw 77.f92b5fed.0, pnvm 285b3568, address xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
iwx0: 11a rates: 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
iwx0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps
iwx0: 11g rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
iwx0: 2T2R
iwx0: 11na MCS 20MHz
iwx0: MCS 0-7: 6.5Mbps - 65Mbps
iwx0: MCS 8-15: 13Mbps - 130Mbps
iwx0: 11na MCS 20MHz SGI
iwx0: MCS 0-7: 7Mbps - 72Mbps
iwx0: MCS 8-15: 14.5Mbps - 144.5Mbps
iwx0: 11na MCS 40MHz:
iwx0: MCS 0-7: 13.5Mbps - 135Mbps
iwx0: MCS 8-15: 27Mbps - 270Mbps
iwx0: 11na MCS 40MHz SGI:
iwx0: MCS 0-7: 15Mbps - 150Mbps
iwx0: MCS 8-15: 30Mbps - 300Mbps
iwx0: 11ng MCS 20MHz
iwx0: MCS 0-7: 6.5Mbps - 65Mbps
iwx0: MCS 8-15: 13Mbps - 130Mbps
iwx0: 11ng MCS 20MHz SGI
iwx0: MCS 0-7: 7Mbps - 72Mbps
iwx0: MCS 8-15: 14.5Mbps - 144.5Mbps
iwx0: 11ng MCS 40MHz:
iwx0: MCS 0-7: 13.5Mbps - 135Mbps
iwx0: MCS 8-15: 27Mbps - 270Mbps
iwx0: 11ng MCS 40MHz SGI:
iwx0: MCS 0-7: 15Mbps - 150Mbps
iwx0: MCS 8-15: 30Mbps - 300Mbps
iwx0: [VHT] Channel Widths: 20MHz, 40MHz, 80MHz
iwx0: [VHT] Features: 31800020<SHORTGI80>
iwx0: [VHT] NSS 1: TX MCS 0..9, RX MCS 0..9
iwx0: [VHT] NSS 2: TX MCS 0..9, RX MCS 0..9

ChatGPT assures me the firmware warnings are nothing to be concerned about as the non-dfs channels appear in the scan - is this true?
Is it correct that theres no support for DFS channels in the iwx driver? The manpage says nothing about it at all .

AI has came up with utter nonsense on many occasions for me, so I take what it says with a grain of salt most of the time as it often tries to convince you that something is true based on a whole load of waffle thats false.

Any ideas how I can get free of 2005 with the wifi speed?

ahhyes · Tuesday at 6:17 AM

Ok - So - I tried switching the 5G radio on my AP over to a non-DFS channel. And the laptop now connects to 5Ghz and media type is listed as "11na"
This troubles me - so if I take this laptop somewhere that has their AP setup using DFS channels, I wont be able to connect? LOL.

A much more serious issue though - and it was also happening while it was stuck in 2.4Ghz mode using iwx. Absolutely crazy packet loss. I can ping and maybe get 1 reply back from a host on the network and then dataflow goes silent.... Then I might get a sporadic packet back after waiting a few minutes. Starting not to be a great experience

ahhyes · Tuesday at 6:52 AM

I missed providing the firmware warnings during startup during my previous posts, sorry:

iwx0: <Wi-Fi 6 AX210> mem 0xdc100000-0xdc103fff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci3
iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-77.ucode: could not load firmware image, error 8
iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0.pnvm: could not load firmware image, error 8

Error 8 implies the files are there but were rejected for some reason.

ahhyes · Tuesday at 7:07 AM

Did a live USB boot into Ubuntu to make sure the new wifi hardware is ok. Solid as a rock.
Speedtest.net shows 240Mbit down and upload speed test also is perfect.
No packet loss.

ahhyes · Tuesday at 7:22 AM

I think the wifi interface under FreeBSD is doing something weird, like maybe resetting itself a lot or frequently, here's a theory.

This is one of those rare laptops that also has an intel based ethernet adaptor - freebsd sees it as em0, and i used it to install the firmware for the wifi.
While trying to use ethernet after the firmware install, I had crazy packet loss on the ethernet connection too, same thing that I am experiencing with wifi on freebsd. I get maybe 1 packet back to a ping to a host on the same network segment and then it its hosed. To make ethernet usable i had to put wlan0 in a down state via ifconfig and then ethernet stabilized and it was happy. Not sure what its trying to do that is screwing up all network connectivity

ahhyes · Tuesday at 8:12 AM

Well - it seems that iwx is garbage
I uncommented the stuff in my rc.conf that blacklisted the iwlwifi driver (was hoping to use the iwx) driver, so it now falls back to iwlwifi and all the problems are gone. A wget request is giving me the same fast speed I had on linux when I tested (30 Megabytes per second). I can certainly live with that. Now to test if the DFS channel thing was a specific gremlin with iwx..

Edit: Nope, no DFS channels visible either with that driver. I guess my concern remains about using this out in the real world if people have configured their AP's to use those channels.

Perceval · 2025-12-17T09:24:53+0000

ahhyes said:
ChatGPT suggests

ChatGPT assures me

Big caveat here. Your current driver doesn't support AC band, and the pAIrrot tells you that's because of DFS ? I don't know if I have to laugh or cry.
You need to cleanly reinstall the driver and the firmware, because FreeBSD seems to mix older and newer stuff. I do think there are several mismatches ; as already said, I had similar problems doing the same things (going from 8265 to AX210, upgrading to 15.0 made the wifi driver and firmware not coherent, it DID work at first, then sudden loss, drop, mixing G/AC, etc.). I just can assure you that I have good AC speed now on my setup, but yes we need to test long time stability (looks fine by now). Please note there are also several Thinkpads which are said to be BIOS stuck on specific wifi cards, but it looks okay here

Don't waste time feeding the billionaires bots when humans try to help here (my knowledge is limited but I try anyway !), thanks

ahhyes · 2025-12-17T09:28:46+0000

Perceval said:
Big caveat here. Your current driver doesn't support AC band, and the pAIrrot tells you that's because of DFS ? I don't know if I have to laugh or cry.
You need to cleanly reinstall the driver and the firmware, because FreeBSD seems to mix older and newer stuff. I do think there are several mismatches ; as already said, I had similar problems doing the same things (going from 8265 to AX210, upgrading to 15.0 made the wifi driver and firmware not coherent, it DID work at first, then sudden loss, drop, mixing G/AC, etc.). I just can assure you that I have good AC speed now on my setup, but yes we need to test long time stability (looks fine by now). Please note there are also several Thinkpads which are said to be BIOS stuck on specific wifi cards, but it looks okay here

Don't waste time feeding the billionaires bots when humans try to help here (my knowledge is limited but I try anyway !), thanks

One thing is true though - no DFS channels show in the scan and I can only connect if I switch my AP to use a non-DFS channel. I am not sure why thats even an issue, I dont understand why those DFS channels are omitted from the channel scan.

ahhyes · 2025-12-17T09:31:43+0000

Perceval said:
Big caveat here. Your current driver doesn't support AC band,

iwlwifi allegedly does - iwm is not in use anymore. iwlwifi is what i ended up with... iwx was causing some bizarre system issues, even killing the em0 ethernet interface.. using iwlwifi all seems ok. I am perplexed by the need to use non-DFS channels though just to use wifi on freebsd.

Perceval · 2025-12-18T07:10:37+0000

I think you should not care about DFS since it's not the problem and you're not supposed to use any DFS compliant AP inside domestic use (it has for legal reasons, but these AP are not powerful enough to make area-wide interferences)...
You should use iwlwifi, at least it works for me. Mixing with iwm and/or iwx will cause errors. I can't remember, but there's a command to force iwm/iwx not to start (something like if_iwm_load="NO" into /boot/loader.conf).
Can you tell me the output of sysctl net.wlan.devices ? It should say iwlwifi0.
Also, what's the output of fwget ? If everything is fine here, it should output something like :

Code:

Needed firmware packages: 'wifi-firmware-iwlwifi-kmod-ax210'
The most recent versions of packages are already installed

The latest quartely version is 20251125.
Make sure that anything related to the 8265 is removed to prevent dual setups.

In my (working) setup, I have if_iwlwifi.ko and if_iwx.ko are loaded if I check with kldstat.