Wireless – Enable Wifi N-only on Ubuntu 14.04 with Broadcom BCM4360

14.04broadcomdriversmacbookwireless

I want to get Wifi N-only work with my Ubuntu 14.04 on Macbook Air 2013-mid which has BCM4360 802.11ac so it should work well with Wifi N-only also in Ubuntu 14.04. In Ubuntu

  • In Software and Updates > Additional Drivers, I see Using Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver source from bcmwl-kernel-source (proprietary).
  • MacbookAir6,2. I find the serial number by sudo dmidecode -s system-product-name but I get also a notice that something is broken MacbookAir6,2 Invalid entry length (0). DMI table is broken! Stop. Why getting such a notice about broken thing?
  • lspci -knn |grep Net -A2 gives the following so the answer here should apply but not; only difference is that I have ac wlan but they have newer with bgn.

Output of the lspci -knn |grep Net -A2

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03) 
    Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device [106b:0117]
    Kernel driver in use: wl

Router

  • Router TP-link tl-wr1043nd v2 is in Wifi N-mode only.
  • Same hardware on OS X works with the Wifi N-mode only, so Ubuntu should also work with it.
  • You can set the band be Full HT40 (=20+20 MHz) or Dynamic 20/40kHz where your ultrabook will use 40MHz band because of Wifi N-only setting.

I do have b43 wifi card. I did the following based on the answer here, which enables slower wifi standards (B, G) but not N. The other thread has a case where the wireless device does not support Wifi N only, but my device supports it, so not relevant here. 

sudo update-pciids
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
% reboot
sudo modprobe -r b43
sudo modprobe b43    
sudo rfkill unblock all

Configurations that work but outside of the thread

  • AC-only (not tested)
  • NG-mixed with Dynamic 20/40 MHz or with Full HT40 (20+20 MHz), where Ubuntu uses only G band.
  • Slower bands

How can you Use Wifi N-only with Ubuntu 14.04 on Macbook Air 2013-Mid?

Best Answer

For the wifi issue: MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs have very similar wireless cards (if not the same), so a simple sudo update && sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer should do the trick.

The reason for it not connecting to the router could be because it is a different type of connection, that the current driver does not support.

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