Belkin RT3200/Linksys E8450 WiFi AX discussion

@Gix What is the wed package that you are talking about? I can't find a reference to it anywhere.

I wanted to test the latest MASTER SNAPSHOT on Belkin RT3200 but the last few snapshot builds have been failing for mediatek/mt7622 target for some reason https://buildbot.openwrt.org/master/images/#/builders/44 . Should I report this as a bug at https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/issues ?

You're right, my apologies.

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Wireless Ethernet Dispatch (wed) is not a package, it is a function of the mt7622+mt7915 chipset to accelerate traffic between ethernet and WLAN clients (see here some explanation: https://lwn.net/Articles/862864/). It seriously drops CPU usage for high speed WLAN clients. This functionality is implemented in the current mt76 driver but it must be enabled (search the topic for wed_enable). And it worked fine until the PPPoE offloading patches.

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this can't be implemented for mt7622+mt7615 (AC wifi) ?

** I've also shared this issue on oftc-channel but my browser's connection was lost, and all history was gone (oftc webchat is really disappointing). If any of you reading this over again, sorry :slight_smile:

Hello, openwrt people!

I tried to flash my belkin rt3200 from stock firmware to openwrt using this instruction https://github.com/dangowrt/owrt-ubi-installer/blob/main/README.md and *.itb files from releases (v0.6.5) section (I've checked their md5sum with that github sends in content-md5: header)

I started with backup process via "Device flash complete backup procedure", after successfully getting mtd[0123] files back by ssh I rebooted device several times to get back to stock firmware (it took 3 times as I recall), but I forgot to do factory reset (step 4. in backup section), don't know if that was necessary...

So I've got back stock interface on 192.168.1.1 and started main flashing process.

First, I've flashed openwrt-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-initramfs-recovery-installer.itb and then nothing happened, device lights gone off. I've waited for more than 1 minute (about 10 minutes), nothing, no lights at all. Tried to unplug\plug device again. No luck, the same: device doesn't show any sign of life: no blinking, no lights.

I've seen that people bricked their devices by flashing first image with no "installer" in name, and then flashing squashfs-sysupgrade file, but in my case even if I chosen wrong file in first step, then it didn't let me flash the second file to brick device with guarantee, because it gone right on the first one.

Stock firmware vesion was: 1.0.01.101415
Device was bought on ebay as brand new. I've used it for a 2 days to check that radio-module working fine.

I have three theories:

  1. Device was flashed to openwrt-like firmware before, then reverted back, and boot-stuff was already mangled when I got it. (maybe I can discard this theory by looking inside those backup files?)
  2. First image in the main flashing process was corrupted while sending it via web-interface.
  3. I've no luck and this is a hardware issue :frowning:

So, my last resort is to connect to serial console?

The installer should work in every case where the device is running either stock firmware or non-UBI OpenWrt builds. Worst case you have (still working) backup files which have slightly diverged or in case of bad blocks early in the flash the offset of the wifi eeprom data could mess up. In any case: it should boot.

While the stock bootloader does verify the integrity of the image before booting, in case of the image being corrupted it sometimes does not dual boot into the other image but rather just drops into a U-Boot> shell. This shortcoming of the stock loader was one of the initial reasons to start hacking up U-Boot from source for this board...
Also the Web-UI of version 1.0.x only validates the header of the image before flashing it -- no integrity checks are performed.
Hence this theory is valid and that could have happened :frowning:

Very unlikely but of course always possible.

You will have to connect the serial console to find out...

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Does RC4 contain this patch?

root@OpenWrt:~# grep -i release /etc/os-release 
OPENWRT_RELEASE="OpenWrt 22.03.0-rc4 r19426-2b1941e47d"
root@OpenWrt:~#

@Latrina Looking at the commit log for RC4, I don't see a commit https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commit;h=96012227e578a0d8dcfa86823db97345e98e2c8f

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config wifi-iface 'wifinet1'
        option device 'radio0'
        option mode 'ap'
        option ssid 'OpenWrt2.4'
        option encryption 'psk2+ccmp'
        option network 'lan'
        option key '***********'
        option wps_pushbutton '1'

root@OpenWrt:~# cat /etc/config/wireless

config wifi-device 'radio0'
        option type 'mac80211'
        option path 'platform/18000000.wmac'
        option band '2g'
        option htmode 'HT20'
        option channel '11'
        option country 'FR'
        option cell_density '0'

Hostname	OpenWrt
Model	Linksys E8450 (UBI)
Architecture	ARMv8 Processor rev 4
Target Platform	mediatek/mt7622
Firmware Version	OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r19744-9be35180f4 / LuCI Master git-22.137.71281-d6dbedd

hello to all we have this problem for months concerning the wifi, either it loses the connection intermittently or impossible to connect at all, this time my iphone in this snapshot remains connected but the android laptop refuses to connect if I restart the router is ok

@Lynx do you has solve the problem for the wireless ?

thanks everybody

Browser based IRC clients are flawed by design, as forward/ back and similar browser-side controls will inevitably break the connection. Decent free (both FOSS and fre as in beer) native IRC clients exist for just about any operating system - and they're worth the 5 minutes to investigate and install them.

2 Likes

I realize this is somewhat off topic, but I was hoping to replace my aging Archer C7 access point with the inexpensive AX202. I've been a very pleased user of the RT3200 so I guess there's at least some commonality as they are both Mediatek based. If I offered to donate an AX202 to a developer would that help in getting patch accepted? [https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/9690] @daniel

EDIT: Welp they sold out...still I could set a price alert if there's interest.

The issue still exists for me with:

OpenWrt 22.03-SNAPSHOT r19445-19f3ee51a2

And with 'reassociation deadline' set to 20000.

Namely last night my wife said that for both her iPhone and iPad she left it in room, came back to it, unlocked it, and internet didn't work despite WiFi symbol showing until she disconnected from WiFi and reconnected to WiFi. It seems this - loss of internet connectivity after sleep pending manual reconnection - occurs about once every day.

I don't know how to fix this or diagnose the issue. :frowning:. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

@daniel any suggestions for cause or things to try because multiple individuals complain about such issues with Apple devices over several threads on this hardware. I realise a difficulty is that there could be a couple of problems not just one problem.

I see no such issues with Android devices or my Windows laptop or desktop.

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If someone could build a build without the PPoE offloading patches, that would be a decent work-around for those using this device as an AP only (assuming that PPPoE patches indeed conflict with the connection issues).

I've managed to connect to serial console, and got this:

F0: 102B 0000
F6: 0000 0000
V0: 0000 0000 [0001]
00: 0000 0000
BP: 0400 0041 [0000]
G0: 1190 0000
T0: 0000 02B0 [000F]
Jump to BL

NOTICE:  BL2: v2.4(release):OpenWrt v2021-05-08-d2c75b21-2 (mt7622-snand-1ddr)
NOTICE:  BL2: Built : 19:55:52, May  6 2022
NOTICE:  SPI-NAND: FM35Q1GA (128MB)
NOTICE:  BL2: Booting BL31
NOTICE:  BL31: v2.4(release):OpenWrt v2021-05-08-d2c75b21-2 (mt7622-snand-1ddr)
NOTICE:  BL31: Built : 19:55:52, May  6 2022

...and after about 90 seconds that thing printed again

F0: 102B 0000
F6: 0000 0000
V0: 0000 0000 [0001]
00: 0000 0000
BP: 0400 0041 [0000]
G0: 1190 0000
T0: 0000 02B0 [000F]
Jump to BL

NOTICE:  BL2: v2.4(release):OpenWrt v2021-05-08-d2c75b21-2 (mt7622-snand-1ddr)
NOTICE:  BL2: Built : 19:55:52, May  6 2022
NOTICE:  SPI-NAND: FM35Q1GA (128MB)
NOTICE:  BL2: Booting BL31
NOTICE:  BL31: v2.4(release):OpenWrt v2021-05-08-d2c75b21-2 (mt7622-snand-1ddr)
NOTICE:  BL31: Built : 19:55:52, May  6 2022

... and that's it.

@daniel

today at this time my macbook pro has lost connexion to OpenWrt
liek my screen after reboot internet and connexion is up and comeback


Capture d’écran 2022-06-17 à 15.40.09

What's the general feeling, am I better off with 22.03 or using snapshot?

I'm using mine as dumb AP, so really only need stable switch and WiFi.

Wifi has never been stable for me with this router.

Looking for some guidance on repairing OpenWRT on my Belkin RT3200. It had been working fine for a few weeks, also running AdGuard on it. Randomly stopped working, and all settings had been reset, and 5GHz radio is not detected. I attempted to update with 'openwrt-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-squashfs-sysupgrade.itb' and see if it would correct the issues, and the router still does not see the 5GHz radio, and when ssh'd into it 'auc' does not work like it did before.

Current Firmware Version: OpenWrt 22.03-SNAPSHOT r19228-0877953235 / LuCI openwrt-22.03 branch git-22.083.69105-af8e91c

Is there a different, more stable, version that I can swap to? Do I need to do a complete reinstall of OpenWRT? If so, is there a guide to doing so? I have been flashing through the GUI

My use case is my primary router, 2.4GHz + 5GHz in USA, running AdGuard on the router as private DNS server.

Hello could you try this:
https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/22.03.0-rc4/targets/mediatek/mt7622/openwrt-22.03.0-rc4-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-squashfs-sysupgrade.itb

I have this version running in my rotuer