Search Linux Wireless

Re: [PATCH] wcn36xx: Fix software-driven scan

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



On 20/08/2020 12:27, Loic Poulain wrote:
HI Bryan,

On Thu, 20 Aug 2020 at 01:54, Bryan O'Donoghue
<bryan.odonoghue@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 19/08/2020 11:52, Bryan O'Donoghue wrote:
On 19/08/2020 09:15, Loic Poulain wrote:
Hi Bryan,

On Tue, 18 Aug 2020 at 20:00, Bryan O'Donoghue
<pure.logic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 18/08/2020 14:34, Loic Poulain wrote:
On Tue, 18 Aug 2020 at 08:15, Kalle Valo <kvalo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Loic Poulain <loic.poulain@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

For software-driven scan, rely on mac80211 software scan instead
of internal driver implementation. The internal implementation
cause connection trouble since it keep the antenna busy during
the entire scan duration, moreover it's only a passive scanning
(no probe request). Therefore, let mac80211 manages sw scan.

Note: we fallback to software scan if firmware does not report
scan offload support or if we need to scan the 5Ghz band (currently
not supported by the offload scan...).

Signed-off-by: Loic Poulain <loic.poulain@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Bryan O'Donoghue <bryan.odonoghue@xxxxxxxxxx>

What changed since v2? Please always include a changelog so that I
don't
need to guess what you have changed in the patch. No need to resend, a
reply is enough.

Yes sorry, this patch has been rebased on ath master and squashed with
Bryan's fix:
        wcn36xx: Set sw-scan chan to 0 when not associated
No additional changes have been made on top of the initial patches.

Regards,
Loic


This is excruciatingly slow on Android.

Android I'm finding unlike Debian where this stuff was tested, merrily
issues scan requests every 30 seconds.

For me this ends up looking like this

[  162.296995] wcn36xx: mac config changed 0x00000040
[  162.297001] wcn36xx: wcn36xx_config channel switch=1
[  162.297005] wcn36xx: hal init scan mode 2
[  177.492402] wcn36xx: mac config changed 0x00000040
[  177.492409] wcn36xx: wcn36xx_config channel switch=40
[  177.492413] wcn36xx: hal finish scan mode 2

Basically it takes 15 seconds to complete.

Interleaved scan seems very slow and is IMO unusable on Android


The software scan is driven by mac80211 which interleaves channels
scanning
with the regular data operations. In worst case, it scans during 111ms
on the
channel and switches back to the operating channel for 200ms.
So, with 35 channels to scan that would take about 11 seconds to
complete...
So yes, it's quite slow...

Yes looks a scheduling thing in mac80211.

However, one remaining
thing to try would be to send an update-channel-list command to the
firmware before each offload scan (cf UPDATE_CHANNEL_LIST_REQ
in the downstream driver). That's not something I've tried yet.

I've tried

1. Setting the operating frequency to a 5ghz band before the scan
2. Updating the channel list with 2g/5g channels via
UPDATE_CHANNEL_LIST_REQ
3. Updating the channel list with 5g only with UPDATE_CHANNEL_LIST_REQ
4. Doing 5g channels only in the channel list of
WCN36XX_HAL_START_SCAN_OFFLOAD_REQ

I don't think the channel list matters, if I recall rightly I've also
tried leaving out the channel list in WCN36XX_HAL_START_SCAN_OFFLOAD_REQ
and get back the same set of channels in the result

I guess we should take this patch anyway, since it makes wcn36xx and
mac80211 agree on ownership of the antenna...

---
bod

Ah.

If we implement ops->flush() we can slash that idle time down significantly

static void ieee80211_scan_state_resume(struct ieee80211_local *local,
                                          unsigned long *next_delay)
{

          if (local->ops->flush) {
                  ieee80211_flush_queues(local, NULL, false);
                  *next_delay = 0;
          } else
                  *next_delay = HZ / 10;
}

Trivial hack example:

+void wcn36xx_flush(struct ieee80211_hw *hw, struct ieee80211_vif *vif,
+                  u32 queues, bool drop)
+{
+}
+
   static const struct ieee80211_ops wcn36xx_ops = {
          .start                  = wcn36xx_start,
          .stop                   = wcn36xx_stop,
@@ -1187,7 +1192,7 @@ static const struct ieee80211_ops wcn36xx_ops = {
          .sta_add                = wcn36xx_sta_add,
          .sta_remove             = wcn36xx_sta_remove,
          .ampdu_action           = wcn36xx_ampdu_action,
-
+       .flush                  = wcn36xx_flush,
          CFG80211_TESTMODE_CMD(wcn36xx_tm_cmd)
   };

Interestingly, we could indeed get rid of this extra 100ms.
Maybe a way to implement this would be to wait for the TX
ring to be empty in dxe.

That ~ 20 seconds is cut to just 4 ! Which to be fair seems to be the
kind of time it took to do the old version of the software scan.

Sure but In the below case, it seems scan occurs while you're not
connected to an AP, which prevents interleaving of operating channel.
The same scan while connected should be longer.

You're right, don't get excited about a fix you 'find' at 1 am.

Still having a hard time getting this one running on Android, even dropping the scan interval to 60 seconds.

ops->flush() helps a bit but not enough

In terms of keeping the antenna busy during the current scan - is that a problem if we skip over the active channel when connected to an AP ?

__ieee80211_scan_completed() seems to re-schedule work which was delayed while hardware scan was ongoing, so, the TX path should be OK with the current scan.

The issue then I guess is on the RX path. During a scan we could tune to the current operational channel, the AP could send data but, we would drop it, because we are scanning.

One solution might be, if we were to skip scanning the operational channel when connected to an STA, then this problem would not happen.

Because the only time we would be tuned to the operational channel would be when we are also in a state to receive any data the AP might send.

We should still get a notification from the firmware on disconnect/dis-assocation.




[Index of Archives]     [Linux Host AP]     [ATH6KL]     [Linux Wireless Personal Area Network]     [Linux Bluetooth]     [Wireless Regulations]     [Linux Netdev]     [Kernel Newbies]     [Linux Kernel]     [IDE]     [Git]     [Netfilter]     [Bugtraq]     [Yosemite Hiking]     [MIPS Linux]     [ARM Linux]     [Linux RAID]

  Powered by Linux