Date: Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:34:36 -0800 From: Sam Leffler <sam@errno.com> To: Jim Pingle <lists@pingle.org> Cc: Rui Paulo <rpaulo@gmail.com>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD-8.0 802.11n support with ath/mwl Message-ID: <4B940DDC.7080707@errno.com> In-Reply-To: <4B8B48E9.70104@pingle.org> References: <5fbf03c21002270427s74d0f067gb76cfe10c2794121@mail.gmail.com> <20100227124308.GA28213@mx.techwires.net> <5fbf03c21002270501l2e388ec9tbdad684d38609861@mail.gmail.com> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1002272029130.49218@fledge.watson.org> <C816D0F2-67CD-4361-8FD3-376F7619EF46@gmail.com> <4B89E174.1060802@pingle.org> <1B1F52CC-FF36-4432-9345-73BB673EE7E8@gmail.com> <4B8AAA0B.4010402@pingle.org> <3BA70425-5413-4E04-AA91-85B699B1D8EF@gmail.com> <4B8B25E0.4060604@pingle.org> <5E979157-9E68-4C08-81BD-14255B038D7F@gmail.com> <4B8B2EEA.6010500@pingle.org> <AD3FC2C8-C71D-473D-9C10-17031A5564EF@gmail.com> <4B8B48E9.70104@pingle.org>
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Jim Pingle wrote: > On 2/28/2010 10:16 PM, Rui Paulo wrote: >> On 1 Mar 2010, at 03:05, Jim Pingle wrote: >> >>> On 2/28/2010 9:41 PM, Rui Paulo wrote: >>>> On 1 Mar 2010, at 02:26, Jim Pingle wrote: >>>>> Ah, I wasn't aware of wlandebug(8). However, it doesn't seem to operate >>>>> on this mwl(4) card. It sets the value of the sysctl net.wlan.0.debug >>>>> and that doesn't show up on my system. Another system with a ral(4) card >>>>> does have that sysctl. Judging by the information in the wlandebug(8) >>>>> man page it appears as though this may be a side effect of mwl doing >>>>> much of the work in firmware. >>>> wlandebug takes an -i argument. I seem to recall you created your wlan interface named "mwl_wlan0", so you need to type wlandebug -i mwl_wlan0. >>> I saw that, but that is hardcoded to expect wlan<x> (wlan0, wlan1, etc) >>> for an interface name. Having seen that, I recompiled wlandebug without >>> the hardcoded interface name check and it didn't work either, but it did >>> toss an error for the sysctl it was trying to tweak. >> The whole system was designed for the interfaces to start with "wlan" and be named "wlan<something>". > > It does certainly seem to lean that way. Personally I prefer to keep the > hardware name in there, but I wasn't aware that would cause other > issues. Especially when VAPs come into play, I'd rather have, for > example, mwl0_wlan1, mwl0_wlan2, ath0_wlan0, etc, so I can better tie > what goes where. But that's more of a bikeshed of personal preference. :-) Not following the wlanX naming convention will cause confusion for things like rc config files (I believe). Definitely any tool I touched expects vap's to be named wlanX. sysctl net.wlan.X.%parent gives the parent ifnet of a vap; I've considered many times including this in the ifconfig status. Feel free to offer a patch that does this. > >>> That made me look deeper at the code and see it was really just setting >>> the debug sysctl based on flags that wlandebug was aware of. Handy, but >>> the same thing could be done by hand with sysctl and some bitwise math >>> in a pinch, assuming the interface has the right oids. (Which mine >>> doesn't, for some reason...) >> The purpose of wlandebug is to not do any math by hand. > > Indeed, You're 110% right on that. I was just trying to work around the > other issues I was seeing to get to the root of the issue, which seems > to be the missing sysctl oid. > > I need to run some more tests and straighten my antenna issues out, but > I'll report what I find back to the list in a few days. mwl 11n support broke sometime near the last firmware update and I never fixed it. I know in particular there are issues with AMPDU and seq#'s but possible other things too. The fw is rather finicky in how state is managed and it's likely the host is not in sync causing problems w/ the ampdu support and rate control algorithm that both operate in the fw. You should be able to get >100 Mb/s througput on an HT40 channel but I think I was seeing more like 35-40. Turning off ampdu is usually helpful to stabilize operation. Sam
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