Hi all, I'm not really a Linux developer, more of a curious user, but the wireless developers mailing list seems appropriate for my questions. Please bear with me if they don't make much sense, as I'm a complete novice when it comes to the wireless subsystem. In any case, I was looking into how to optimally tune wireless reception at work, since the APs are aging and only support up to MCS7 (65 Mb/s), so any improvements would help. I'm using a HP laptop with a Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235, driven by iwlwifi / iwldvm (vanilla Linux 4.14.8). I noticed that `iw dev wlo1 station dump` generally reports a 58.5-65 Mb/s rx bitrate, but when the connection is taxed (e.g. downloading a file), it drops. Since the only other OS on my machine is Windows, I tested by downloading a large file there and generally the average throughput was slightly higher. I'm not a Windows user, so I don't have a clue if `netsh show interfaces` reports a correct effective bit rate, but it was always fixed to 65 Mb/s in my tests. This led me to digging around in iwlwifi. It seems that iwlwifi registers its own rate control algorithm (iwl-agn-rs) with the mac80211 subsystem and this is hardcoded. Hence a few questions: - Why does iwlwifi have / need its own rc algorithm, instead of using minstrel? - It seems that iwl-agn-rs is not configurable by the end user. Would there be any interest in development for iwl-agn-rs configurability, e.g. being less / more conservative about lowering rates? I'm mostly interested in rx performance - I'm making the assumption here that rx rates are negotiated with the AP (as opposed to being forced). - Is there any documentation regarding iwlwifi or its rc algorithm implementation? If so, I would kindly appreciate pointers. Cheers, Tambet
