Interesting post.
BTW, I have been debugging those issues too, in my case coming from
using bcm4313 under windows xp.
And actually found out the cause, at least in my case: every setup frame
*RETRANSMISSION* invalidates the whole setup connection process.
I dont know if its a bug into the winxp driver of into bcm4313 firmware,
all what I know is that setup fails if router RE-sends even just 1
frame, either with retransmission flag set, or a new one with different
seqnum.
Which in fact means, if the router is not close a couple of meters from
you (hotel,cafes,office,..) you cant connect, as router will inevitably
send at least 1 retransmission.
On the other hand, setup is always successful when a strict series of
1-only-1 setup frames is sent both sides: auth req/auth resp/asso
req/asso resp.

Personally I got used to that issue, and also I always bring with me a
secondary backup usb interface.. sorry, what to do? life is a continuous
workaround.. :P

Regards,



On Tue, Jan 14, 2014, at 12:59 AM, Michael Tokarev wrote:

So, I returned from my newyear trip.  There, I tried to use this my
laptop
with many various wifi networks, in hotels, cafes and other places.  And
it never worked.

So I bought an usb wifi adaptor, some cheap old orient model, which
worked
MUCH better than the built-in broadcom wifi. Except of 2 issues.

First, the antenna in this usb dongle is small, so signal quality isn't
as
good as for the built-in adaptor with good antenna.

And second, which is much more severe, it is an external adaptor plugged
into an usb slot, so it isn't that easy as internal one, but it is very
easy to BREAK the usb slot.  Which is what I did while sitting in a cafe
and someone else walking by.  So now I've one usb port on my laptop
broken
now (with very unpleasant large crack on the laptop "body") and the usb
wifi adaptor I bought is broken too.

I also tried to replace the internal wifi card with some non-broadcom
model, but the laptop refused to _boot_ while the card is inserted
(a so-called bios lock).

So the question stands: what is the way to actually use the internal
bcm card, without all those hassles I already encountered?

So far, the expirience was that anything with broadcom inside should
NOT be considered for a purchase, because the issues they gave you
costs much more than a price difference for a different model without
broadcom parts.

Thanks,

/mjt

28.12.2013 16:24, Michael Tokarev wrote:

quoted

Thank you very much for the reply!

28.12.2013 13:42, Arend van Spriel wrote:

quoted

On 12/27/2013 09:58 PM, Michael Tokarev wrote:

quoted

Hello.

Got a Lenovo Thinkpad notebook with the following wifi card:

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01)
    Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device [14e4:0608]
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
    Memory at f1600000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
    Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information: Len=78 <?>
    Capabilities: [48] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
    Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
    Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
    Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel
    Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 00-00-24-ff-ff-fe-48-d2
    Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?>
    Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge

[wifi tx stalls after short usage, 3.12 kernel]

quoted

quoted

P.S. I tried to find archives of brcm80211 list, or a way to
subscribe to it before posting, but found neither.  Are there
archives?

Nope. The brcm80211-dev-list is just a (hopefully) convenient way to get
your message to the brcm80211 driver developer within Broadcom. So it is
always best to Cc: the linux-wireless list as well.

Ah.  So the real archives should be for linux-wireless@ not for brcm..@ :)
Got it, thank you!

quoted

Now about your card. I am not sure where to start, but can you dump
contents for following debugfs file:

/sys/kernel/debug/brcmsmac/bcma*/hardware

# cat /sys/kernel/debug/brcmsmac/bcma0\:0/hardware
board vendor: 14e4
board type: 608
board revision: 1109
board flags: 402201
board flags2: 884
firmware revision: 262032c

quoted

Also a capture file would be great so if you have wireshark or dumpcap you can add monitor interface and capture 802.11 packets from connect up until the stalls. Commands for adding/enabling monitor interface (ass root/sudo):

# iw dev wlan0 interface add mon0 type monitor
# ifconfig mon0 up

Capture file made with tcpdump is attached (gzipped).  I started the
capture with wlan0 disabled, next I  used `nmcli con up id "wifi mjt"'
to connect to the AP (named, obviously, "mjt"), and next I tried to
d/load a file from my website (86.62.121.231).  It d/loaded about 27Kb
and stalled.  Next I tried to ping the AP (192.168.88.65), which also
didn't work.

That's quite a typical behavour of this whole thing.  Sometimes it
lasts a bit longer, but that's rather unusual and it ends up stalling
anyway.

Is it worth the effort to try 3.13-tobe kernel here?  I browsed changes
in there made in drivers/net/wireless/brcm80211/ compared with 3.12, but
there aren't many changes related to the softmac version, and most
looks rather cosmetic.

Thank you very much for the help!

/mjt

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