en:users:drivers:iwlwifi

Introduction

iwlwifi is the wireless driver for Intel's current wireless chips. For older chips, there are other drivers: ipw2100

ipw2200

iwlegacy (for Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG and Intel® Wireless Wi-Fi Link 4965AGN)

Features

Station (client)

AP mode on 2.4GHz (on devices driven by iwlmvm)

P2P and multi-role (on devices driven by iwlmvm)

note Monitor (sniffer) - see

IBSS (Ad-Hoc)

Supported Devices

Git repositories

There are four repositories that we maintain: iwlwifi-fixes with fixes for the current kernel release cycle

iwlwifi-next with features for the next kernel release cycle

iwlwifi/linux-firmware that feeds the official linux-firmware tree. It contains early releases, or content that just hasn't been merged in mainline linux-firmware yet.

iwlwifi/backport-iwlwifi.git which is a backport based tree with iwlwifi / mac80211 / cfg80211 commits only. This tree is ideal for bisecting.

Firmware

You can get the latest firmware from linux-firmware.git, or download it from the table below. NOTE: this table contains only the first official firmware version released, which is only guaranteed to work with the kernel version specified in the table. To get the latest version for newer kernels, please use the firmware git tree instead. Device Kernels Module Firmware Intel® Wireless Wi-Fi 5150AGN 2.6.29+ iwldvm iwlwifi-5150-ucode-8.24.2.2.tgz Intel® Wireless Wi-Fi 5100AGN

Intel® Wireless Wi-Fi 5300AGN

Intel® Wireless Wi-Fi 5350AGN 2.6.27+ iwldvm iwlwifi-5000-ucode-5.4.A.11.tar.gz 2.6.30+ iwlwifi-5000-ucode-8.24.2.12.tgz 2.6.38+ iwlwifi-5000-ucode-8.83.5.1-1.tgz Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6230

Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1030

Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 130

Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6235 2.6.36+ iwldvm iwlwifi-6000g2b-ucode-17.168.5.1.tgz 2.6.36+ iwlwifi-6000g2b-ucode-17.168.5.2.tgz 3.2+ iwlwifi-6000g2b-ucode-18.168.6.1.tgz Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6205 2.6.35+ iwldvm iwlwifi-6000g2a-ucode-17.168.5.1.tgz 2.6.35+ iwlwifi-6000g2a-ucode-17.168.5.2.tgz 2.6.35+ iwlwifi-6000g2a-ucode-17.168.5.3.tgz 3.2+ iwlwifi-6000g2a-ucode-18.168.6.1.tgz Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150

Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N + WiMAX 6250 2.6.30+ iwldvm iwlwifi-6050-ucode-9.201.4.1.tgz 2.6.37+ iwlwifi-6050-ucode-41.28.5.1.tgz Intel® Centrino® Ultimate-N 6300

Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6200 2.6.30+ iwldvm iwlwifi-6000-ucode-9.176.4.1.tgz 2.6.30+ iwlwifi-6000-ucode-9.193.4.1.tgz 2.6.30+ iwlwifi-6000-ucode-9.221.4.1.tgz Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000 2.6.30+ iwldvm iwlwifi-1000-ucode-128.50.3.1.tgz 3.2+ iwlwifi-1000-ucode-39.31.5.1.tgz Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 100 2.6.37+ iwldvm iwlwifi-100-ucode-39.31.5.1.tgz Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 135 3.2+ iwldvm iwlwifi-135-ucode-18.168.6.1.tgz Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 105 3.2+ iwldvm iwlwifi-105-ucode-18.168.6.1.tgz Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 2200 3.2+ iwldvm iwlwifi-2000-ucode-18.168.6.1.tgz Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 2230 3.2+ iwldvm iwlwifi-2030-ucode-18.168.6.1.tgz Intel® Wireless 7260 3.10+ iwlmvm iwlwifi-7260-ucode-22.1.7.0.tgz 3.13+ iwlwifi-7260-ucode-22.24.8.0.tgz 3.14.9+ iwlwifi-7260-ucode-25.228.9.0.tgz 3.17+ iwlwifi-7260-ucode-23.15.10.0.tgz 3.19+ iwlwifi-7260-ucode-25.17.12.0.tgz 4.1+ iwlwifi-7260-ucode-25.30.13.0.tgz 4.3+ iwlwifi-7260-ucode-16.242414.0.tgz Intel® Wireless 3160 3.10+ iwlmvm iwlwifi-3160-ucode-22.1.7.0.tgz 3.13+ iwlwifi-3160-ucode-22.24.8.0.tgz 3.14.9+ iwlwifi-3160-ucode-25.228.9.0.tgz 3.17+ iwlwifi-3160-ucode-23.15.10.0.tgz 3.19+ iwlwifi-3160-ucode-25.17.12.0.tgz 4.1+ iwlwifi-3160-ucode-25.30.13.0.tgz 4.3+ iwlwifi-3160-ucode-16.242414.0.tgz Intel® Wireless 7265

Intel® Wireless 3165 (starting from firmware XX.XX.13.0 and kernel 4.1) 3.13+ iwlmvm iwlwifi-7265-ucode-22.24.8.0.tgz 3.14.9+ iwlwifi-7265-ucode-25.228.9.0.tgz 3.17+ iwlwifi-7265-ucode-23.15.10.0.tgz 3.19+ iwlwifi-7265-ucode-25.17.12.0.tgz 4.1+ iwlwifi-7265-ucode-25.30.13.0.tgz 4.3+ iwlwifi-7265-ucode-16.242414.0.tgz Intel® Wireless-AC 8260 4.1+ iwlmvm iwlwifi-8000-ucode-25.30.13.0.tgz 4.3+ iwlwifi-8000-ucode-16.242414.0.tgz Intel® Wireless-AC 8265 4.6+ iwlmvm iwlwifi-8265-ucode-22.361476.0.tgz Intel® Wireless-AC 3168 4.6+ iwlmvm iwlwifi-3168-ucode-22.361476.0.tgz Intel® Wireless-AC 9260 4.14+ iwlmvm iwlwifi-9260-th-b0-jf-b0-34.618819.0.tgz Intel® Wireless-AC 9560

Intel® Wireless-AC 9461

Intel® Wireless-AC 9462 4.14+ iwlmvm iwlwifi-9000-pu-b0-jf-b0-34.618819.0.tgz Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz 5.1+ iwlmvm iwlwifi-cc-46.3cfab8da.0.tgz Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz 5.2+ iwlmvm iwlwifi-Qu-48.13675109.0.tgz Where that appropriate location is depends (again) on your system distribution. You can typically find this location by looking in the udev scripts of your distro, the default on most distributions is /lib/firmware. Installation of the firmware is simply: # cp iwlwifi-*.ucode /lib/firmware You can now load the driver.

Support

If you have technical issues or general questions about Intel Wi-Fi on Linux, please context Intel Customer Support. For bug reports and debugging, please see the page dedicated to that.

7260, 3160, 7265, 7265D, 3165 and 3168 support

Those devices will not be supported by the newest firmware versions: the last firmware that was released for 3160, 7260 and 7265 is -17.ucode. Bug fixes will be ported to -17.ucode. 7265D, 3165 and 3168's latest firmware version is -29.ucode. In order to determine if your 7265 device is a 'D' version, you can check the dmesg output: Detected Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 7265, REV=0x210 The revision number of a 7265D device is 0x210, if you see any other number, you have a 7265 device.

Firmware_class dependency

The firmware necessary to support the devices is distributed separately under the firmware license. Note that many distributions ship the firmware, you could install the “linux-firmware” package or similar. If that doesn't work, or you need newer firmware, read on.? The driver loads the firmware using the kernel's firmware_class infrastructure. More information can be found under in the Documentation/firmware_class/README file in the kernel source. In order to function correctly the driver requires this to be enabled in your kernel. When you configure the kernel, you can find this option in the following location: Device Drivers -> Generic Driver Options -> Userspace firmware loading support You can determine if your kernel currently has firmware loader support by looking for the CONFIG_FW_LOADER definition on your kernel's .config file. In addition to having the firmware_class support in your kernel, you must also have a working userspace infrastructure configured. The steps for installing and configuring this are very distribution specific and the tools differ, but distributions have this enabled. Once you have the firmware loader in place (or if you aren't sure and you just want to try things to see if it works), you need to install the firmware file into the appropriate location.

About the backport tree

We merge the updates coming from the backport infrastructure on a regular basis. This means that the bleeding edge of the backport tree will run against decently recent kernel (usually against Linus's tree). If you checkout an earlier branch / commit in backport-iwlwifi.git, you might not be able to work against the most recent kernel. Please keep that in mind. We have a release cycle based on the backport tree. These Core releases can be very useful for someone who wants to integrate our Wi-Fi solution into his home made system.

About dual-boot with Windows and "fast-boot" enabled

If you have a dual-boot machine with a recent version of Windows and start seeing problems during initialization of the WiFi device when booting Linux, the problem could be due to the “fast startup” feature on Windows. With this feature enabled, Windows don't really shut down the entire system, but leaves things partially running so you can start the machine faster again. Try to disable this option, on Windows 10 it should be in “Control Panel→Hardware and Sound→Power Options→System Settings”, then disable the “Fast Startup” option in “Shutdown Settings”. This will cause Windows to fully shutdown and may solve the issue.

About platform noise

Wi-Fi heavily relies on radio frequencies, and those are subject to interference. Interference may come from another Wi-Fi device, or from many other non Wi-Fi devices (e.g. microwaves) that operates on the same frequency, and it might also come from other components of your own device/computer – this is known as 'platform noise'. Platform noise depends on the actual platform/computer and its design/manufacturing, and not on the Intel Wi-Fi module. Some common sources of platform noise might be: The PCIe bus, especially when switching in/out of power saving modes.

USB3 and graphics (in certain scenarios).

Sometimes, even the fact that several ingredients’ ground lines are connected can cause noise. This kind of interference might happen on 2.4GHz band, it is much less likely to happen on 5.2GHz band. Also note that using 40MHz (and not 20MHz) channel bandwidth will increase the probability to suffer from platform noise (since more frequencies might impact the Wi-Fi performance). Some potential work-around options to this issue: Disable Wi-Fi's power save (prevent the PCIe link to go to power save): power_scheme=1 module parameter for iwlmvm

Disable USB3 in BIOS (if possible), it not, just stop using it

Disable 40MHz on 2.4GHz: cfg80211_disable_40mhz_24ghz module parameter

Use 5GHz band (on devices that support 5GHz operation) The fact that one of these options helped doesn't prove that the issue being troubleshooted is 'platform noise', but it may be an indication. Another thing that can be tried is to modify the antenna position. The antennas are typically located in the lid of the laptop. It is worth trying to open / close the lid or to rotate the system and see if it has any effect.

About the monitor / sniffer mode

Our devices support monitor mode. When you have VHT APs around, you should load the iwlwifi module with amsdu_size=3 This will put lots of pressure on the memory subsystem, but it will allow you to hear 12K long packets. You may see firmware crashes in case you didn't set that module parameter.

About iwldvm support and known issues

Wi-Fi / Bluetooth coexistence

Having Wi-Fi and Bluetooth running at the same time is a challenge. These scenarios have been tested thoroughly on 7260 and up, less so on earlier devices. This is why some people may face issues with devices that are handled by iwldvm. For users of these devices who have problems when Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are running concurrently, we suggest to disable BT Coex by loading iwlwifi with bt_coex_active=0 as a module parameter.

Power management