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