[Cerowrt-devel] Managed to break 802.11n (on a 3800)

Sebastian Moeller moeller0 at gmx.de
Thu Jan 16 07:29:36 PST 2014


Hi Aaron,

On Jan 16, 2014, at 16:03 , Aaron Wood <woody77 at gmail.com> wrote:

> All,
> 
> I'm noting this here in case anyone is interested.  After I write this up, I'm going to start from scratch on the configuration, and factory-reset the router.
> 
> =====
> 
> The 5GHz radio on my 3800 seems to be in a very odd state.  I'm not quire sure what state it's in, but it seems to be only doing HT20 1x1.  And in a fairly broken manner at that.
> 
> Running the rrul test (over wifi directly to the router as the netserver), tcp uploads were 25Mbps or so, but download was 5Mbps.  

	This is with your mac? Try rrul_noclassification, macosx (at least 10.8) will not do RRUL fair to a fast host. Why I do not know… it always prioritizes the upload, as if it did not see/trust the downstream markings (heck maybe it is busy using all bandwidth for upstream so that it literally never sees the markings on the downstream packets..)

About the other issue I do not know anything…

Best Regards
	Sebastian

> This is me 1-2 meters from the router.  Load was never more than 0.33.  (I can share the results of people are interested).
> 
> After a full power cycle, wifi isn't coming up at all.
> 
> =====
> 
> How I got here:
> 
> 
> I'm in France, and had dutifully set my unit with the FR country code when setting up CeroWRT.  I had noticed some odd latencies (periodic 100-200ms latency every 10-20 seconds over wifi) on the 5GHz network.  The router was on channel 36, and I wanted to move it up to the far-upper ranges, so I tried to specify a "custom" channel to do so (140).  This was the channel I thought I had been using with stock (Netgear) firmware.
> 
> Wifi didn't come back up after applying the changes, and the luci interface seemed to be tripping up over stuff that it was reading out of the configuration files.
> 
> I ssh'd in via ethernet, and fixed up the configurations by hand.
> 
> Except the driver is still reporting that the 5GHz network won't kick into 802.11n modes, and won't use HT40.  It seems to be sure it's configured for it, but isn't using it.
> 
> Further, digging into the rc_stats files with the minstrel speeds, I found some very odd data (not what I was expecting to see:
> 
> (laptop, which can do 2x2 HT40)
> rate      throughput  ewma prob  this prob  this succ/attempt   success    attempts
>    D   6         6.0       99.9      100.0             2(  2)        65          65
>        9         0.0        0.0        0.0             0(  0)         0           0
>       12         2.9       25.0      100.0             0(  0)         1           1
>       18         4.3       25.0      100.0             0(  0)         1           1
>       24         5.6       25.0      100.0             0(  0)         1           1
> A   P 36        32.4       99.9      100.0             0(  0)        51          51
>   C   48        10.4       25.0      100.0             0(  0)         1           1
>  B    54        11.5       25.0      100.0             0(  0)         1           1
> 
> Total packet count::    ideal 53      lookaround 7
> 
> (AppleTV, 1x1 HT20)
> root at cerowrt:/sys/kernel/debug/ieee80211/phy1/netdev:sw10# cat stations/58\:55\:ca\:51\:b5\:4b/rc_stats 
> rate      throughput  ewma prob  this prob  this succ/attempt   success    attempts
>        6         3.5       57.8      100.0             0(  0)         6           6
>        9         3.9       43.7      100.0             0(  0)         2           2
>       12         5.1       43.7      100.0             0(  0)         2           2
>       18        10.0       57.8      100.0             0(  0)         3           3
>    D  24        13.1       57.8      100.0             0(  0)         3           3
>   C   36        14.2       43.7      100.0             0(  0)         2           2
>  B    48        18.2       43.7      100.0             0(  0)         2           2
> A   P 54        46.2       99.9      100.0             1(  1)       348         367
> 
> Total packet count::    ideal 331      lookaround 37
> 
> Whereas what I'm seeing for the 2.4GHz radio is:
> 
> root at cerowrt:/sys/kernel/debug/ieee80211/phy0/netdev:sw00/stations# cat 10\:9a\:dd\:30\:96\:34/rc_stats 
> type         rate     throughput  ewma prob   this prob  retry   this succ/attempt   success    attempts
> CCK/LP        1.0M           0.7      100.0       100.0      0              0(  0)         2           2
> CCK/SP        2.0M           0.0        0.0         0.0      0              0(  0)         0           0
> CCK/SP        5.5M           0.0        0.0         0.0      0              0(  0)         0           0
> CCK/SP       11.0M           0.0        0.0         0.0      0              0(  0)         0           0
> HT20/LGI     MCS0            5.6      100.0       100.0      1              0(  0)         2           2
> HT20/LGI     MCS1            0.0        0.0         0.0      0              0(  0)         0           0
> HT20/LGI     MCS2            0.0        0.0         0.0      0              0(  0)         0           0
> HT20/LGI     MCS3            0.0        0.0         0.0      0              0(  0)         0           0
> HT20/LGI     MCS4            0.0        0.0         0.0      0              0(  0)         0           0
> HT20/LGI     MCS5           30.3      100.0       100.0      5              0(  0)         1           1
> HT20/LGI  t  MCS6           32.5      100.0       100.0      5              0(  0)        11          11
> HT20/LGI T P MCS7           35.0      100.0       100.0      5              6(  6)        34          34
> 
> Total packet count::    ideal 45      lookaround 3
> Average A-MPDU length: 1.3
> 
> 
> And here are radio blocks from the current /etc/config/wireless:
> 
> config wifi-device 'radio1'
> 	option type 'mac80211'
> 	option macaddr '28:c6:8e:bb:9a:49'
> 	list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
> 	list ht_capab 'TX-STBC'
> 	list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
> 	list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
> 	option txpower '17'
> 	option distance '25'
> 	option channel '48'
> 	option country 'US'
> 
> config wifi-device 'radio0'
> 	option type 'mac80211'
> 	option hwmode '11ng'
> 	option macaddr '28:c6:8e:bb:9a:47'
> 	option htmode 'HT20'
> 	list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
> 	list ht_capab 'TX-STBC'
> 	list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
> 	list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
> 	option txpower '26'
> 	option country 'FR'
> 	option distance '15'
> 	option channel 'auto'
> 
> ======
> 
> Some notes after having repaired the situation:
> 
> - The pci paths to the radios was missing from /etc/config/wireless, that's the only thing that I saw that seemed grossly out of place.
> 
> - Back up and running, and yes, it's much happier, now.  Over wifi I get 60-70Mbps upload and ~40Mbps download (running rrul).  Latency sucks.  Wifi has some ugly bufferbloat.  (although these results are somewhat in question when the router has a 1m load average over 5.0...)
> 
> - Enabling all the SQM features I was having previously also considerably cleaned up wifi performance.  It's more balanced, but still not nearly as balanced as I see on gigabit ethernet.
> 
> 
> 
> -Aaron
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