"Russell King (Oracle)" <rmk+kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Using wl183x devices in AP mode with various firmwares is not stable. > > The driver currently adds a station to firmware with basic rates when it > is first known to the stack using the CMD_ADD_PEER command. Once the > station has finished authorising, another CMD_ADD_PEER command is issued > to update the firmware with the rates the station can use. > > However, after a random amount of time, the firmware ignores the power > management nullfunc frames from the station, and tries to send packets > while the station is asleep, resulting in lots of retries dropping down > in rate due to no response. This restricts the available bandwidth. > > With this happening with several stations, the user visible effect is > the latency of interactive connections increases significantly, packets > get dropped, and in general the WiFi connections become unreliable and > unstable. > > Eventually, the firmware transmit queue appears to get stuck - with > packets and blocks allocated that never clear. > > TI have a couple of patches that address this, but they touch the > mac80211 core to disable NL80211_FEATURE_FULL_AP_CLIENT_STATE for *all* > wireless drivers, which has the effect of not adding the station to the > stack until later when the rates are known. This is a sledge hammer > approach to solving the problem. > > The solution implemented here has the same effect, but without > impacting all drivers. > > We delay adding the station to firmware until it has been authorised > in the driver, and correspondingly remove the station when unwinding > from authorised state. Adding the station to firmware allocates a hlid, > which will now happen later than the driver expects. Therefore, we need > to track when this happens so that we transmit using the correct hlid. > > This patch is an equivalent fix to these two patches in TI's > wilink8-wlan repository: > > https://git.ti.com/cgit/wilink8-wlan/build-utilites/tree/patches/kernel_patches/4.19.38/0004-mac80211-patch.patch?h=r8.9&id=a2ee50aa5190ed3b334373d6cd09b1bff56ffcf7 > https://git.ti.com/cgit/wilink8-wlan/build-utilites/tree/patches/kernel_patches/4.19.38/0005-wlcore-patch.patch?h=r8.9&id=a2ee50aa5190ed3b334373d6cd09b1bff56ffcf7 > > Reported-by: Russell King (Oracle) <rmk+kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Co-developed-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@xxxxxxxxx> > Tested-by: Russell King (Oracle) <rmk+kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@xxxxxxxxx> > Signed-off-by: Russell King (Oracle) <rmk+kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Patch applied to wireless.git, thanks. 14f89946b6b3 wifi: wlcore: fix wlcore AP mode -- https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/patch/E1sClp4-00Evu7-8v@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/documentation/submittingpatches
