[sf-lug] Problem with (you guessed it!) Broadcom. Using DD-WRT.

[aaronco36]

Quoting Rick M <rick at linuxmafia.com> from [1]:

> Wow, thank you, Aaron!  Impressive summary.
> I'd totally lost track of what had been
> going on with the OpenWRT people, so thank
> you in particular for that update.  It's long
> been the case that dd-wrt supports more
> devices.  At least traditionally, the main cost
> of that broader support matrix was that
> dd-wrt tolerates a great deal more proprietary
> encumbrances.
>
> It's not every day that my internal lexicon
> of yiddishsims gets a contribution.  Narishkeit indeed,

You're welcome for all that :-)

Specifically speaking of "narishkeit", the OpenWrt infobox on Broadcom 
wireless [2] reveals some more of the absolute narishkeit(!) Broadcom 
keeps pulling over the years with its proprietary, closed source wireless 
drivers (binary blobs), as follows....

~~~~~~~~~ quoting from [2] ~~~~~~~~~~
People often wonder why DD-WRT supports stuff that LEDE/OpenWrt don't. It 
is often as easy as that: access to drivers.

*  Broadcom has not released any FOSS drivers. Broadcom doesn't support 
open-source much at all.

* DD-WRT has a license agreement and NDA in place with Broadcom that allow 
usage of better, proprietary, closed source wireless drivers (binary 
blobs) which they are not allowed to redistribute freely.

* LEDE / OpenWrt use only FOSS drivers. Fully open-source support for 
Broadcom wifi chips is very limited.

Consequences

Now what does limited support mean? What is working with open-source 
drivers and what not?

Limited means: 2.4GHz only b/g available, and 5GHz doesn't work at all. 
There might be some exceptions, but the general rule is as written before. 
For details see Unsupported features

With that in mind (no or only limited open source support of Broadcom 
devices), it's up to you whether to buy Broadcom devices or not.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This brings us right back to one of Rick M's classic comments at [3] that 
IMNSHO hits the spot dead-on.

Quoting Rick M <rick at linuxmafia.com> from [3] in two parts:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> To explain:  There are companies like Broadcom
> and Marvell that are too busy putting profits up
> their noses to cooperate even minimally with the
> open source community, and thus fail to even
> put out a super-brief statement saying 'We
> license firmware file $FOO with sha1sum $BAR to
> be distributed without modification by anyone
> provided no reverse-engineering rights are granted.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> The problem of firmware BLOBs that the open souce
> community is not yet licensed to redistribute
> (requiring creative workarounds like 'cutter' utilities)
> is one that plagues all Linux distributions in exactly
> the same way, and the solutions are pretty nearly
> identical across distributions.
>
> If you're driving by Broadcom headquarters,
> it might help to fly a paper airplane in the front
> door with, written on it, 'Hey, doofuses!  Try
> expending the cost of a first-class stamp on
> permitting unmodified redistribution of your chips'
> firmware initialisation files.'  Love, the open source
> community.'  (I'm not saying to attach the message to a
> brick, because that would be rude.  Albeit satisfying.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The main benefit of using DD-WRT firmware is that it "tolerates a great 
deal more proprietary encumbrances"/"BLOBS" and thus supports many routers 
such as the ones having Broadcom chips with 4GB flash and 16GB RAM as 
previously mentioned.

At the same time and IMHO, I think one of the main drawbacks to using 
DD-WRT firmware as compared to using OpenWrt/LEDE (other than ones related 
to using chips by the above proprietary "doofuses") is the fact that much 
of its current, non-Beta firmware is aging, the DD-WRT firmware thus uses 
older linux kernels and build features (see [4]), and thus the currently 
available DD-WRT firmware might be less secure out-of-the-box.
As a telling example of DD-WRT's relative "insecurity", Telnet is enabled 
by default on all the builds listed in [4]. Could someone please explain 
that?

-A


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References
===============================

[1] http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2018q2/013167.html

[2] https://openwrt.org/meta/infobox/broadcom_wifi

[3] http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2017q4/012948.html

[4] https://dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/What_is_DD-WRT%3F

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aaronco36 at sdf.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.org