Hi everybody, [Please CC me in replies, I am currently not subscribed to this list.] For quite a few weeks, I have now been trying to get an AR9280 mini-PCI card to run as an access point, both in 802.11g and 802.11n mode. In 802.11g mode, it seems to work for some time with multiple clients, but then generally drops most packets (estimated >90%) after a period of a few hours of usage. Restarting the device makes it work again. In 802.11n mode, one client (Asus eeePC 1000 with Atheros 802.11agn chipset) initially gets a fairly stable connection (with massive packet loss after some period of usage), while another client (Dell Latitude XT with Broadcom 802.11ag chipset) only manages to connect with an absymal transfer rate (<2 MBit/s). This behaviour seems to be mostly independent from WPA and encryption settings (with the unencrypted connection being sometimes slower than the WPA2/AES secured one), and does not change much with driver versions. My default driver is the one included in the upstream 2.6.30.5/.7 kernel, but I have also tried compat-wireless-2.6 in multiple versions, including 2009-09-25. The hardware is detected as: [ 25.714849] cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: US [ 27.233246] geode-aes: GEODE AES engine enabled. [ 27.510611] AMD Geode RNG detected [ 29.955007] phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'ath9k_rate_control' [ 29.957464] cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: US [ 29.965266] Registered led device: ath9k-phy0::radio [ 29.965407] Registered led device: ath9k-phy0::assoc [ 29.965540] Registered led device: ath9k-phy0::tx [ 29.965693] Registered led device: ath9k-phy0::rx [ 29.965744] phy0: Atheros AR9280 MAC/BB Rev:2 AR5133 RF Rev:d0: mem=0xd0b60000, irq=9 and sits in a mini-PCI slow on an Alix2d13 boards. hostapd is version v0.6.9 from Debian testing and configured with these relevant options: interface=wlan0 country_code=AT hw_mode=g ieee80211n=1 ht_capab=[HT40-][SHORT-GI-40] channel=6 wpa=3 wpa_passphrase=<long string> wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK wpa_pairwise=CCMP rsn_pairwise=CCMP driver=nl80211 wme_enabled=1 wme_ac_bk_cwmin=4 wme_ac_bk_cwmax=10 wme_ac_bk_aifs=7 wme_ac_bk_txop_limit=0 wme_ac_bk_acm=0 wme_ac_be_aifs=3 wme_ac_be_cwmin=4 wme_ac_be_cwmax=10 wme_ac_be_txop_limit=0 wme_ac_be_acm=0 wme_ac_vi_aifs=2 wme_ac_vi_cwmin=3 wme_ac_vi_cwmax=4 wme_ac_vi_txop_limit=94 wme_ac_vi_acm=0 wme_ac_vo_aifs=2 wme_ac_vo_cwmin=2 wme_ac_vo_cwmax=3 wme_ac_vo_txop_limit=47 wme_ac_vo_acm=0 The WME settings were taken from the OpenWRT forum and indeed improved stability and throughput, although I can not currently quantify the improvement. Unfortunately, I seem to have more questions than answers: 1. Could this be an instance of the issue with massive packet loss that has been documented previously with ath9k? Is this a known problem with AR9280? Are there any patches floating around that are not yet in compat-wireless and that I could try? 2. Is there anything to be done about the Broadcom client, and why is it much more unstable than the Atheros one? 3. Why does the ath9k driver in AP mode fail to work after a few hours and needs a restart? 4. How do I tell CRDA to load frequency definitions for my location (AT) instead of the default (US)? I might be blind, stupid, or both, but using the slightly conflicting documentation available on various Wikis, I was unable to change this. I have read that some chipsets are hard-wired for one location and can't be changed, but couldn't find out if mine is (it was bought in Europe, so shouldn't be locked to US in any case). An RTFM (with an up-to-date pointer, preferrably for Debian/Ubuntu) in this matter would be highly appreciated. 5. After having set the correct location, is hw_mode=a and channel=40 actually supposed to work? I have not, so far, managed to get this device into 802.11an mode (which might be down to locked frequencies). Any hints, pointers, or - even better - patches are very welcome ;-) best regards, Rene -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
