Problem with wireless drivers to work with host ap

[Tobias Gunkel]

Hello Fabio,

>> I hope this is the correct address to send such e-mails, I am in need of
>> some help here.
>> In the work needed to start my theses, one of my assignments is to set
>> my laptop to work as an access point. From what I've read, hostapd is
>> the program that should make this happen for me.
>>
>> I have Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller
>> [14e4:4727] (rev 01) and after reading countless forums/tutorials I
>> can't seem to get this working.
> 
> I don't have a Broadcom WLAN adapter myself but according to
> http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers there are two lines of drivers
> for Broadcom chips: b43(/legacy) and brcmsmac/brcmfmac.
> 
> If you want to use hostapd the driver has to support AP mode (see AP
> column of the linuxwireless driver table).
> 
> The b43(/legacy) driver page (click on the driver name in the table)
> which supports AP mode states that the BCM4313 is not supported by the
> driver.
> 
> The new open source driver brcmsmac/brcmfmac from Broadcom does support
> the BCM4313 chip but not AP mode (AP = no).
> The brcmsmac/brcmfmac page states: "To be done once softmac driver is in
> mainline: Add support for ..., AP, ...".
> Depending on how old this information is, it seems that you will not get
> hostapd to work with this chipset at the moment.
> 
> Maybe someone else knows the current status of that driver.

I took a look into the git repository of the open source driver brcmsmac
for BCM4313 and it does not have AP support yet (mac80211_if.c: /* Just
STA for now */).

But according to the support table
(http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43) the closed source wl
driver (http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php) supports
that card too.
That one seems to support AP mode so you may give it a try. Note that it
uses the old Wireless Extensions (wext) interface instead of the new
mac80211 (brcmsmac has this one) interface.

I am not sure if hostapd supports AP mode via wext.
At least you may give it a try. You can test AP mode for wext drivers by
setting the mode with "iwconfig <wlan-dev> mode master" and then check
the mode with iwconfig. If this works try to start hostapd.

Regards,
Tobias