Comment 11 for bug 931168

On this page : http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/brcm80211#Developer_information , at paragraph "Regulatory Implementation for brcmsmac" is written :

This generation of chips contain additional regulatory support independent of the driver. The devices use a single worldwide regulatory domain, with channels 12-14 (2.4 GHz band) and channels 52-64 and 100-140 (5 GHz band) restricted to passive operation. Transmission on those channels is suppressed until appropriate other traffic is observed on those channels. Within the driver, we use the ficticious country code "X2" to represent this worldwide regulatory domain. There is currently no interface to configure a different domain. The driver reads the SROM country code from the chip and hands it up to mac80211 as the regulatory hint, however this information is otherwise unused with the driver.

If I understand correctly, it would mean that channels 12-14 would be restricted by the hardware itself?
I suppose it does not prevent it to connect on wifis on these channels, as it works with another driver. Maybe it only means that the chipset can only do passive scanning, instead of active scanning? (which should not prevent connecting)