ATH79 vs AR71xx on GL-AR150

Hello everybody.
I have a GL-AR150 with the latest OpenWRT release. I am currently using the ar71xx architecture: it's working perfectly and I am able to saturate my 100/10 connection even using SQM (for the upload link on pppoe-wan).
Since I know that ar71xx will be soon deprecated, I tried to upgrade to the ATH79 version.
Some problems arose;

  • wan and lan port are switched. Usually eth0 is WAN, eth1 is LAN. With ath79, you have to switch these two values to make it work (so that eth1 is WAN, eth0 is LAN).
  • having done the things above, my speed cannot go over 60 mpbs (unless I remove SQM).
  • i decided then to switch lan and wan cables and configured accordingly the interface (eth0 -> wan but cable on the labelled lan port, eth1 -> lan but cable on the labelled wan port). I rebooted and I magically got my speed back.

However, when I used the command "swconfig dev switch0 show", I discovered that I wasn't able to see my devices in the output, but on port 1 I saw my ISP PPPoE access concentrator:
Global attributes:

  • enable_vlan: 0*
  • ar8xxx_mib_poll_interval: 500*
  • ar8xxx_mib_type: 0*
  • enable_mirror_rx: 0*
  • enable_mirror_tx: 0*
  • mirror_monitor_port: 0*
  • mirror_source_port: 0*
  • arl_table: address resolution table*
    Port 0: MAC e4:95:6e:xx:xx:xx (gl-ar150)
    Port 1: MAC aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff (ISP mac).
    Reversing to the "slow" ath79 version, I get:
    Global attributes:
  • enable_vlan: 0*
  • ar8xxx_mib_poll_interval: 500*
  • ar8xxx_mib_type: 0*
  • enable_mirror_rx: 0*
  • enable_mirror_tx: 0*
  • mirror_monitor_port: 0*
  • mirror_source_port: 0*
  • arl_table: address resolution table*
    Port 0: MAC e4:95:6e:xx:xx:xx (gl-ar150)
    Port 1: MAC (a device)
    *Port 1: MAC (another device - but not the ISP AC)
    Port 1: another MAC etc

Reversing back to the old working ar71xx version, the output of the swconfig command is totally different and I don't see any MAC addresses.

What happened? What's the meaning of finding the ISP AC mac address in the list?
Sincerely I don't even know what question to ask, it was a strange situation...

ar71xx is already deprecated. At least in snapshots.

The chip in that router is designed for the typical 4+1 port desktop router application. The 4 LAN ports have a switch to one CPU port. The WAN port is direct to the CPU.

In a pocket router to save space and cost some of the ports are not connected to physical wiring. So the switch is redundant as only the CPU side and one of its ports is ever usable, but there is no way in the chip to bypass it.

I think with ar71xx the direct port is eth0 and the switched one is eth1, this probably reverses with ath79.

The "Physical Settings" tab or ifname in /etc/config/network sets up which eth is connected to the wan or the lan.