Regulatory Domain Support

(NOTE: This section is a work in progress.)

FreeBSD's net80211 stack has basic regulatory domain support, enforcing restrictions on frequency, operating modes, transmission power and general behaviour.

The regulatory domain database is in an XML file - /etc/regdomain.xml. This is used by ifconfig(8) to view and manipulate regulatory domain settings.

Some drivers (eg if_ath(9)) impose further restrictions. This may include limits on transmission power due to number of physical radios in a MIMO setup, channel, channel edges and transmission rate. The former may be regulatory related, but per-transmission rate limits are a hardware limitation - exceeding these will cause distortion and hardware damage.

(TODO)

SKUs and Country entries contain multiple regulatory entries. Each regulatory entry contains:

A frequency range, from channel centre to channel centre (eg 2412 - 2472 MHz);
Channel width (20MHz/40MHz) and channel separation (5MHz/20MHz);

There are also a set of flags describing the operational parameters:

2ghz / 5ghz - frequency type
cck - legacy rates - 11b
ofdm - OFDM only - 11a, 11na, pure-11g
dyn - Dynamic CCK/OFDM - 11g, 11ng
gsm - 900mhz channel
ht20 / ht40+ / ht40- - 802.11n HT allowed
turbo / half / quarter - Atheros Turbo/Half/Quarter modes allowed

There may be multiple regulatory entries with the same frequency but differing channel widths and operational flags. The regulatory support code searches the list of frequencies for the first match on both frequency range and operational flags.

There are then a set of regulatory parameters for the given regulatory entry:

The maximum TX power for the given entry
An optional maximum TX power if DFS/TPC (Transmit Power Control) is enabled and operational
An optional maximum antenna gain

And also, a set of flags which control behaviour:

dfs - Radar/DFS/TPC is required for the channel
4ms xmit - Maximum TX time per frame is 4ms
noadhoc - ADHOC/IBSS mode is not allowed
nohostap - Host AP mode is not allowed
passive - Active scanning is not allowed - devices must listen passively for announcements before transmitting on the channel

To view the current list of regulatory domains and SKUs:

# ifconfig wlan0 list countries

To set the current country:

# ifconfig wlan0 country <countryname>

Please note the country name is not the ISO country code but is the full country specification from list countries. For example, country AU will not set Australia, but will set Austria.

To view the current regulatory domain frequency and operating modes:

# ifconfig wlan0 list regdomain

To view the current limits on per-channel TX power:

# ifconfig wlan0 list txpower