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RTW88(4)		    Kernel Interfaces Manual		      RTW88(4)

NAME
       rtw88 --	Realtek	IEEE 802.11n/ac	wireless network driver

SYNOPSIS
       The   driver   will   auto-load	without	 any  user  interaction	 using
       devmatch(8) if enabled in rc.conf(5).

       Only if auto-loading is explicitly disabled, place the following	 lines
       in rc.conf(5) to	manually load the driver as a module at	boot time:

	     kld_list="${kld_list} if_rtw88"

       It is not possible to load the driver from loader(8).

DESCRIPTION
       The rtw88 driver	is derived from	Realtek's Linux	rtw88 driver.

       This  driver  requires  firmware	to be loaded before it will work.  The
       package		 wifi-firmware-rtw88-kmod	    from	   the
       ports/net/wifi-firmware-rtw88-kmod  port	 needs	to be installed	before
       the driver is loaded.  Otherwise	no wlan(4) interface  can  be  created
       using  ifconfig(8).   One  can  use  fwget(8)  to  install  the correct
       firmware	package.

       The driver uses the linuxkpi_wlan  and  linuxkpi	 compat	 framework  to
       bridge  between	the Linux and native FreeBSD driver code as well as to
       the native net80211(4) wireless stack.

HARDWARE
       The rtw88 driver	supports PCIe devices with the following chipsets:

	     •	 Realtek 802.11n  wireless 8723de (RTL8723DE)
	     •	 Realtek 802.11ac wireless 8821ce (RTL8821CE)
	     •	 Realtek 802.11ac wireless 8822be (RTL8822BE)
	     •	 Realtek 802.11ac wireless 8822ce (RTL8822CE)

LOADER TUNABLES
       compat.linuxkpi.skb.mem_limit
	       If you are running a 64bit system with more than	 4GB  of  main
	       memory  you need	to set this tunable to 1 in loader.conf(5) and
	       reboot once to make  it	effective.   This  tunable  will  work
	       around  a  problem  with	 DMA and limit allocations for network
	       buffer memory to	the lower 32bit	of physical  memory  and  make
	       the driver work.

SEE ALSO
       rtw88fw(4),     wlan(4),	   networking(7),    fwget(8),	  ifconfig(8),
       wpa_supplicant(8)

HISTORY
       The rtw88 driver	first appeared in FreeBSD 13.2.

BUGS
       Certainly.

       Does not	seem to	work (reliably)	on machines with more than 4GB of main
       memory.	See in the "LOADER TUNABLES" section above.

       While rtw88 supports 802.11a/b/g/n/ac  modes,  the  compatibility  code
       currently  only	supports 802.11a/b/g modes.  Support for 802.11n/ac is
       yet to come.

FreeBSD	15.0			 June 13, 2025			      RTW88(4)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=rtw88&manpath=FreeBSD+15.0-RELEASE+and+Ports>

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