N800-Wifi channels questions

[KalleGrabowski]

Hi there,

after using a 770 for about half a year I just bought a n800.
Although living in Europe I imported a US-Version and now encountered a first small wlan problem.
When I took the n800 out of the box I had troubles connecting to my home network which had been working perfectly with my 770 so far. After trying different settings like hiding or unhiding the ssid I realized, that I could not connect because my access point was set on channel 13, which I learned from wikipedia is only available in Europe or Japan but not in the States. Once I changed the channel of my access point I could connect immediately.
My question now is:
Is there a way to convince my tablet to operate on channel 13 or is the frequency spectrum "soldered" into the wlan-chip, so that there is no way of changing it by software?

Thanks,
Kalle

[lardman]

I'd be surprised if they used different hardware. Have you tried flashing an image from one of the European Nokia download sites (or maemo.org)?

Si

[KalleGrabowski]

I just flashed the latest firmware by using the standard tool that can be downloaded from the support homepage. Since the whole procedure of determining the right update version runs without any user interaction I have no idea if there are localized versions.
When starting the system for the first time I pick German for global settings. I will see if I can find different versions of the latest firmware.

Kalle

[iFrank]

AFAIK, the channel restriction is controlled on the firmware level, not hardware; I would be surprised if these devices turn to be different.

[lardman]

Any news on this?

Simon

[bac522]

I would send Nokia tech support a question about this.

[KalleGrabowski]

Since I could not find localized images to flash I guess I will try to contact the nokia support.
Judging from my previous experiences with email support from large companies I would be suprised if I got anything but a text module, but hope dies last of course :)

Kalle

[Milhouse]

What channels were available when you configured the N800 with a German location?

The available channels is most likely driven by the locale. If you configure the N800 with a US locale you probably only get channels 1-12, a European locale may give channels 1-13 and a Japanese locale may give you channels 1-14.

Other than the settings available in the Language & Region control panel applet I'm not sure how else the N800 can determine your region and thus what restrictions to apply to the WiFi channels. That said, you'd think if you chose a more restrictive region (such as switching from Europe to US) while actively using a wireless connection on channel 13 the connection would have to be broken in order to stop using channel 13...

Of course the easy solution may be to change the channel on your access point! :)

[TA-t3]

I think the US channels are 1-11, not 1-12. AFAIK.

[Milhouse]

I stand corrected, the US is 1-11 - thanks! :)

[athreya]

mine has now begun to crash while searching for networks..

can someone send me a link to the latest firmware upgrade?

[KalleGrabowski]

Hi,

I want to give this matter one last try.

I contacted the nokia support twice and got the following answer.
The Europeans don´t feel responsible, since I bought a US-device.
The US-support doesn´t care since it does connect to the wifi channels valid in the states.

Applying different country or language settings does not change anything in terms of wifi channel bandwidth.

The only thing I could imagine to be responsible for the channel limitation is the MAC-address of the device. Lets say the address pools are different for us and european device. By typing in your MAC address prior to downloading the firmware nokia could be able to provide different "localized" versions.

My question now is:
Could anybody of you provide me with a "european" MAC-address so that I can check if the two resulting firmware images differ?

That would be a great help.

Thanks,
Kalle

[Milhouse]

00:19:4F:9E:9C:4D is the WLAN MAC of my N800 purchased via the UK Nokia store (manufactured in Finland). There's another number below the BT MAC titled Code/Codigo which is 0631673 - I've no idea what it represents but thought I'd mention it.

[lennys26]

I am just curious as to what answer [if any] ever came out of this - whether the mac address change worked, or if it was actually possible.

I have a US n800 that I use in the UK and I recently ran in to an issue with a network running wifi channel 13 while visiting Spain. We ended up changing the router to channel 10.

FYI, my language and locale are and always have been set as UK.

Cheers.

[tz1]

You can change the regulatory domain (which channels) via:

/sys/devices/platform/wlan-omap/default_country.

The default it 0x10 and it is FCC but I don't think it says "FCC" (unsigned char [1], char [3]).

Setting the first byte to 0x01 appears to enable through at least channel 13 (2472)

I don't think the driver implements region 0x41 (MTK? japan) to allow 14/2482, but it might be something which can be edited in the source.

These won't show up on the settings dialog (there is a OSSO_PRODUCT_WLAN_CHANNEL variable that says FCC/US), but iwconfig and iwlist should be able to use the extra channels, and you might be able to edit something in /var/lib/gconf/system/osso/connectivity

[TA-t3]

The setting on my N800 (OS2007) is 0x30. I have 13 channels.

[lennys26]

tz1 / TA-t3,

Thanks for the info. I was a bit surprised that no one had replied (and/or tackled this issue) before.

I will try what you have noted and see how quickly I can brick my n800!

Thx.

[Jerome]

You can change the regulatory domain (which channels) via:

/sys/devices/platform/wlan-omap/default_country.



Since I got some N800s I ordered from the USA, I tried that today. It does not work, for the following reason:

All what you see under /sys/... are not real files. They are only an image of the kernel configuration. It works like the /proc directory.

So to change this variable, one must change kernel option, presumably boot options. Does anyone have an idea how to do that?

[TA-t3]

The files are virtual, but you can still change the values. That's how you change dynamic, internal kernel values. On desktop systems there's a script run at boot time which reads values from /etc/sysctl.conf and writes the values to the matching files in /sys/. No such file on the N800, so there's probably some other place in the system where values are set at boot time. That doesn't stop you from changing them later.

However, in this particular case you're right - it doesn't seem possible to modify /sys/devices/platform/wlan-omap/default_country. So we haven't yet found where to change / set the wi-fi channel range, only where to see some of the current settings.

EDIT: Correction: The variables controlled by sysctl are in /proc/sys/, not /sys/ as I wrote above. /sys is for exporting kernel data structures to userspace, so in the context we're talking about it's a reference section.

[Jerome]

So, probably, what we need to do is to find out where sysctl.conf (or the local equivalent) is hidden, right?

[TA-t3]

Something like that, yes. I'll hold back on my hunting until I can again ssh into my N800 though.. too much work to do that from the device itself.

[Stetty]

I have the same problem with my n810
I cannot use ch 12 or ch 13

If I use the airmon-ng the radio work ok an I can see the ap on ch 12

I check how the wifi module is loaded and after the insmod the init script call a utility named wlan-cal (/mnt/initfs/usr/bin/wlan-cal)

This wlan-cal do the job of reading from some place (private nokia data) and set the wireless parameters
It you rmmod the wifi module cx3110x.ko and the umac.ko and put it back with insmod you can see in wireless manager the ap on ch 12 or 13but you cannot connect on it

You must call the wlan-cal to make the wifi work again but you will lose the 12 and 13 ch

A modified wlan-cal to witch don't use the nokia stored value for the regulatory domain will do the job

[david.hilton]

I have a similar issue.

Just a thought; if someone without the problem could tar up their /etc, doing a diff between the two directories could be a help. I'm not sure what information might be kept in /etc on the N800 (I got mine 3 days ago), but there shouldn't be anything personal.

Regardless, a fresh working copy of /etc would probably be easiest to work with.

updated:
To do this, you could just enter "tar -czf /media/mmc1/etc.tgz /etc" (assuming you have a card in your external slot), and from there do anything you want to with the file.

[david.hilton]

Well, I just did it on my (not-European) device; it was 200kb total, so it's pretty small.

http://filebin.ca/kyypfv/etc.tgz

[eug001]

I got that problem when i was traveling in France back in April. I couldn't connect my N800xOS2008 to a lot of WiFi hot spots!
I think that WiFi channels bug should be fixed by Nokia

[Johnx]

I'd be willing to bet that somehow wlancond or something that wlancond talks to reads this out of the same "hidden" NAND partition that holds the WLAN MAC address and the lock code and other data that persists between reflashes. My reasoning is that my tarball of Debian does not use wlancond and lets me choose all channels up to 13. If you want me to do any testing, just ask.

-John

[speculatrix]

has wlancond been stripped, if not, can someone use strace (or the preload hack) to see what files it might open?