Instead of reviving this dead thread, I am going to pose the same question here but with some context/further research.
OpenWrt currently contains two different flavors of ath10k firmware. The "classic" and the "CandelaTech" version.
The classic has two different "branches":
- 10.2.4-1
- 10.2.4.70
There is no changelog between the two apart from a recommendation in the Kalle's repository to choose 10.2.4-1 as per the recommendations of QCA's firmware team: https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware/commit/6912a8c57f13cdcde019219fc096da2c7cf453f1
However, there is a changelog for the .70 branch here, it seems to be used by ChromiumOS: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/overlays/chromiumos-overlay/+log/master/net-wireless/ath10k-firmware
According to this, the .70 branch adds "adds support for management frames over normal
packet transport (presumably host-target-transport/HTT)interface instead of over the WMI management interface".
The CT also has two different versions:
- 10.1
- 10.1-HTT
The CT version gets updates with a proper changelog and can support IBSS. However, it is based on an older firmware. Apparently they had a 10.2.4 version but it was found to be full buggy, thus they opted to backport features to 10.1 instead.
My questions are:
- Besides asking the brick wall that is CAF/QCA, would anyone happen to know what makes the 10.2.4-1 branch better than the 10.2.4.70 branch in the classic firmware (besides HTT)?
- How can we confirm if 10.2.4.70 is really using HTT for management frames like the 10.1-HTT CT version?
- Why does CT use 10.1 instead of 10.2.4? I can't seem to find any reason why other than "there are bugs".
- Can the QCA988X (i.e. Wave 1) qualcomm chipsets support:
As this commit is relatively easy to backport to mac80211-5.4, but there seems to be no configuration knobs or anything to enable it.
As for my findings from testing the various different firmwares, I experience better throughput and responsiveness on ath10k classic using version 10.2.4.70.70 as compared to latest 10.2.4-1-0047 or ath10k-ct(-htt)-v017. In addition, I am using the classic driver with https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/commit/1e27befe63ff4c69f110c7310316f4af75ee63e9#diff-d87df7e70af64eb54b7d1901c6d1ddfd reverted.
On top of SQM, I experience latencies from fast.com tests at 24ms loaded and 20 ms unloaded.