Intel's IWD 2.0 Released For Modern Linux Wireless Daemon

[Spacefish]

due to a quirk called LAR - card must be aware of other 5GHz stations prior to being able to broadcast on 5GHz.

Yes that´s true.. It´s controlled by a flag "NO-IR" (no initial radiation) on the channels reported by the driver.. The driver receives this info from the firmware running on the card, which is loaded by the driver beforehand.. So the regulatory database is acutally embeeded in the cards firmware / updated with it..
I tried to enable 6GHz (WiFi 6E) on my AX210, but it´s pretty much locked down in firmware.. Things i tried:

- Just patch the driver to report all channels as "active" to the kernel and with no NO-IR flag. -> wpa_supplicant or IWD let´s you select the channel, but setting in in firmware fails with and error code.
- Patch the regulatory database in the firmware image -> Nah thing is signed and the signature is checked in Firmware
- There is a way for a device manufacturer to load their own regulatory database during boot, but it has to be signed as well.. If such a DB is loaded the location/regulatory zone might be overriden by the BIOS / UEFI, for example if the device has a 4G/5G modem and determines the country by the MCC of the received mobile network
- Sending fake beacon frames from the only AP the card sees put´s it into the regulatory zone advertised in the beacon frame (not practical, as you typically receive multiple networks and the majority wins) -> this "LAR" mechanism is completly implemented in firmware, there is even a patent for that (which describes the method with MCC from a mobile network as well)
There is a function though which put´s the card into "test-mode", the firmware command has 1 32bit input called "key" in the driver..
As far as i understand it this is the way how OEMs working with intel will validate their designs during R&D and get certification, it should "unlock" the card´s firmware, so you can set whatever TX-power and Channel you want.. However the firmware seems to crash / lockdown till you power-cycle the card when you enter an invalid key.. Otherwise iterating over all 4294967296 possibilities wouldn´t be out of this world. Rebooting the card and re-uploading the firmware takes too long for this to be viable unfortunately..

Guess someone has to rever-engineer the firmware and find some buffer overflow?!

Otherwise i am counting on other manufacturers releasing similar 802.11ax cards which arent´t that restricted (looking at your HiSilicon / Huawei)...

I don´t like the choices intel made lately to verndor-lock their customers into their platform. Like for example the versions of the AX2*1 or AX4*1 which only work with their platforms, the "Intel VMD / RST" crap (used for Optane Cache, but implemented in the Chipset not in software -> Why the fuck not implement it in software / a driver), the ARC-GPUs which can only be Firmware-updated via their platforms. and especially their "Software Defined Silicon" DRM crap.

[Mahboi]

I'm glad IWD was made. Compared to the archaic hassle that was wpa_supplicant, IWD is clean, quick and simple. Never gave me trouble yet.

[Danny3]

I see that right before the release there is this change:

netconfig: Enable IPV6 support by default

I wonder what this means for privacy.
If the IPv6 address is derived from the MAC address and if the IPv6 support can be disabled.
If not, I'm not interested into using such garbage software that doesn't care about my privacy!

[rene]

updated https://t2sde.org/packages/iwd

[tildearrow]

so softap on 5ghz is available? or are they still following microsoft example of only 2ghz softap?
i know they block their own cards on 5ghz softap but they should not block other cards too

You mean on Intel cards? I doubt they are following Microsoft's example.
The lack of support for 5GHz is due to a quirk called LAR - card must be aware of other 5GHz stations prior to being able to broadcast on 5GHz.

It is possible to work around this issue by patching hostapd to scan (so that the card finds out there is a 5GHz station nearby) before initiating the access point.

[YCbCr]

Still using wpa_supplicant just because it lets me to store my WiFi passwords in a plain text file.

Not sure why that would be a desirable feature, but so does iwd: https://iwd.wiki.kernel.org/networkc...twork_settings

[StarterX4]

Still using wpa_supplicant just because it lets me to store my WiFi passwords in a plain text file.

[RejectModernity]

Wow, thanks for iwd, my pure garbage realtek 8812au actually connected to my AP with it. With wpa_supplicant connecting always resulted in error.

[timofonic]

so softap on 5ghz is available? or are they still following microsoft example of only 2ghz softap?
i know they block their own cards on 5ghz softap but they should not block other cards too

What are the advantages of it? Could you please elaborate on it?

Also, it would be nice to make a collaborative project with own governance, not just Intel branding everywhere.

Is this so better compared to alternatives? What's left to implement?

[loganj]

so softap on 5ghz is available? or are they still following microsoft example of only 2ghz softap?
i know they block their own cards on 5ghz softap but they should not block other cards too