Open FirmWare for WiFi networks: a UniBS NTW group project
Realized by Francesco Gringoli and Lorenzo Nava
Welcome!
OpenFWWF, Open FirmWare for WiFi networks, is a project that wants to
provide an easy and inexpensive platform to implement new Medium Access
Control (MAC) mechanism, and wants to be a valid alternative to
simulations and expensive ad-hoc platforms. The combination of OpenFWWF
and b43 driver is a complete and cheap tool that makes testing of new
MAC easy achievable.
This site provides an open source firmware for Broadcom/AirForce
chipset based devices. Currently this firmware has been tested on 4306
and 4318 chipset revisions and with kernel 2.6.27-rc5 (module b43 from
wireless-testing). Firmware has been developed starting from
specifications in http://bcm-v4.sipsolutions.net: we report here
some information more we discovered, such as important interactions
between the MAC processor, the hardware registers and the operating
mechanisms that rules data frames along the transmission and reception
paths.
This project has been successfully completed thanks to the work of
reverse engineering available at http://bcm-v4.sipsolutions.net and
to the tools that Michael Buesch makes available to the community.
What this firmware supports:
* works in infrastructured mode as both station and AP, the latter
requires hostapd
* it is compliant with DCF access scheme in b and g modes, not tested
in a bands
* Preliminary testing shows that ad-hoc mode works as it does with
proprietary firmware
What this firmware does not support:
* does not implement RTS/CTS handshake procedure, must be disabled on
module load
* does not work with hardware cryptography acceleration, use without
encryption!
* does not work with dot11 QoS, must be disabled on module load
If you need help:
If you need help, send a message to the OpenFWWF team:
mailto:openfwwf@ing.unibs.it