GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 722550
Show supported frequencies for Wi-Fi
Last modified: 2018-09-26 10:12:08 UTC
It's not possible to know whether the Wi-Fi chip on my card supports 5GHz frequencies. It would be useful to know what the maximum speed supported is, and whether it supports 5GHz in addition to 2.4GHz.
Tried "nmcli d show wlp3s0" and it didn't show those device capabilities. Not sure whether NM actually exports it.
Something like http://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/log/?h=dcbw/5ghz-caps I assume? Then you can use if (nm_device_wifi_get_capabilities (wdev) | NM_WIFI_DEVICE_CAP_FREQ_5GHZ) <do cool stuff>
dcbw/5ghz-caps patch looks sound to me
Bastien, how about now? Or, (for everyone) would it be better to have a completely new FrequencyCapabilies property on the Wifi device that contains this stuff? There may be new bands in the future (60ghz with 802.11ad) but not that many. There are also non-public WiFi bands (3.9ghz and 4.9ghz public safety) and uncommon ones (900Mhz ISM) that we don't care that much about right now. So, I think we can get away with frequency caps in the wifi capabilities field. The other question is on affirmative capabilities. It's kinda ugly that if neither 2ghz or 5ghz capabilities are indicated, that means "unknown", which could be due to an older NetworkManager or a driver which sucks and doesn't provide any frequency indications. Should I add a NM_WIFI_DEVICE_CAP_FREQ_SUPPORTED or something, to indicate that NM_WIFI_DEVICE_CAP_FREQ_*GHZ caps are valid?
Created a proper NetworkManager review bug for this branch: bug 723295.
(In reply to Dan Williams from comment #4) > Bastien, how about now? > > Or, (for everyone) would it be better to have a completely new > FrequencyCapabilies property on the Wifi device that contains this stuff? > There may be new bands in the future (60ghz with 802.11ad) but not that > many. There are also non-public WiFi bands (3.9ghz and 4.9ghz public > safety) and uncommon ones (900Mhz ISM) that we don't care that much about > right now. So, I think we can get away with frequency caps in the wifi > capabilities field. It doesn't looks very future-proof, but it's better than nothing :) > The other question is on affirmative capabilities. It's kinda ugly that if > neither 2ghz or 5ghz capabilities are indicated, that means "unknown", which > could be due to an older NetworkManager or a driver which sucks and doesn't > provide any frequency indications. Should I add a > NM_WIFI_DEVICE_CAP_FREQ_SUPPORTED or something, to indicate that > NM_WIFI_DEVICE_CAP_FREQ_*GHZ caps are valid? We'd probably just hide the field if neither values are set, to avoid confusion.
(In reply to Bastien Nocera from comment #6) > (In reply to Dan Williams from comment #4) > > The other question is on affirmative capabilities. It's kinda ugly that if > > neither 2ghz or 5ghz capabilities are indicated, that means "unknown", which > > could be due to an older NetworkManager or a driver which sucks and doesn't > > provide any frequency indications. Should I add a > > NM_WIFI_DEVICE_CAP_FREQ_SUPPORTED or something, to indicate that > > NM_WIFI_DEVICE_CAP_FREQ_*GHZ caps are valid? > > We'd probably just hide the field if neither values are set, to avoid > confusion. in the end a flag "NM_WIFI_DEVICE_CAP_FREQ_VALID" was added to indicate whether the two values 2GHz and 5GHz are (probably) reliable.
Created attachment 373299 [details] [review] wifi: Show Wi-Fi frequencies the hardware supports
Created attachment 373300 [details] [review] wifi: Show the frequency used by the Wi-Fi network
This is how one can check whether an adapter supports 5GHz (or just 2.4GHz) on Windows: https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/network-wifi/how-enable-5ghz-wi-fi-on-your-laptop-3608743/ and on macOS: https://networking.grok.lsu.edu/Article.aspx?articleid=17340
Moved to https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/merge_requests/206 as bugzilla bugs are rotting away.