Intel BE200NGW WiFi 7 M.2 Card

[geerlingguy]

Intel's BE200NGW WiFi 7 M.2 Card is an inexpensive gateway into fast up-to-5 Gbps WiFi, using the 360 MHz channel width afforded on the 6 GHz band...

I have ordered a card and hope to test it soon!

[geerlingguy]

Note: A few other users, like @thewade and @wdebowski, have been testing the BE200 on Pi 5 already.

See: #120 (comment)

[geerlingguy]

@thewade got it working on Ubuntu 24.04, and iwlwifi is included out of the box. (So no need for a kernel recompile.)

But on Pi OS, I don't think it is (I can check). If not, have to recompile the kernel with iwlwifi enabled:

 Symbol: IWLWIFI [=n]                                                                                            │   
  │ Type  : tristate                                                                                                │   
  │ Prompt: Intel Wireless WiFi Next Gen AGN - Wireless-N/Advanced-N/Ultimate-N (iwlwifi)                           │   
  │   Location:                                                                                                     │   
  │     -> Device Drivers                                                                                           │   
  │       -> Network device support (NETDEVICES [=y])                                                               │   
  │         -> Wireless LAN (WLAN [=y])                                                                             │   
  │ (1)       -> Intel devices (WLAN_VENDOR_INTEL [=y])                                                             │   
  │   Defined at drivers/net/wireless/intel/iwlwifi/Kconfig:2                                                       │   
  │   Depends on: NETDEVICES [=y] && WLAN [=y] && WLAN_VENDOR_INTEL [=y] && PCI [=y] && HAS_IOMEM [=y] && CFG80211  │   
  │   Selects: FW_LOADER [=y] 

Then you can check dmesg with the WiFi chip connected (dmesg | grep iwlwifi, it should spit out what firmware it's looking for—I think. Otherwise glance inside the git tree for linux-firmware and find the right files.

For example, if you need version 89:

wget https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/plain/iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-89.ucode
wget https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/plain/iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0.pnvm

Stash those two files inside /lib/firmware and reboot.

More info about Intel WiFi firmware: https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/iwlwifi (note that you can grab more bleeding-edge firmware from that site, it feeds the linux-firmware repo).

[thewade]

I saw your live stream and you mentioned you might want to use the Intel chip in access point mode with 6GHz.

Unfortunately, that might prove to be tricky due to the way regulatory works with Intel cards. In order to determine if you are in a regulatory region that supports the 6GHz band it scans nearby networks to pull the country info from them. The term they use for this is Location Aware Regulatory.

When using the chip in access point mode however it cannot do the scan and the 6GHz band remains locked.

Someone proposed a patch that allows for the scan but it hasn’t been accepted:
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/hostap/2024-July/042824.html

Even with the fix it isn’t great solution, cause if there are no nearby wireless networks broadcasting the country info then it will never determine the regulatory region.

I have never tried to build an OpenWRT access point myself. The OpenWRT community might have other tricks and hacks to get around this.

[geerlingguy]

@BennyE posted some info for getting the card up and running in #690, and the card is now up on the site: https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/cards_network/intel-be200-wifi-7.html