Do the wifi "client" side drivers include any kind of bufferbloat fixes in Linux, BSD, macOS, iOS, Android. I thought Airtime Fairness (ATF) and Airtime Queue Limits (AQL) are on the wifi "AP" device. Do wifi "client" drivers include fq_codel? How does it work on wifi "clients"?
Looks like Apple Macs mostly use Broadcom WiFI card which use brcmfmac (FullMAC) driver in Linux. Intel/Windows laptops predominantly use Intel WiFI cards. Do make-wifi-fast fixes work on FullMAC drivers like brcmfmac as AP or client in Linux or OpenWrt? How about iwlwifi (is it softMAC or fullMAC ?) as AP or client in Linux or OpenWrt?
What kind of settings / parameters, if possible, can be changed on wifi "client" devices (running Windows 10/11, Linux, BSD, macOS, Android, iOS) to minimize bufferbloat / latency?
re: 1 - The code from the AP side is fully generalizable down to the station side. ATF is not needed but also not used. AQL acts as a means of keeping a minimal amount of data in the device so fq_codel higher up can mediate. So all the wifi chips supported by these enhancements (ath10k, as are the intel wifi chips, are pretty common), benefit, on linux laptops. I presently use an ath10k, but am thinking of trying out a mt79 soon, on my laptops.
BSD has no support for fq_codel in wifi. I've not benchmarked it. As for windows, we did a bit of benchmarking recently that was not good.
No, these apis don't work on full macs. Broadcom is mostly in the woods still here.
OSX and Ios does have fq_codel but it's pretty high up in the stack above the wifi here, and they've not actually implemented the codel portion of fq_codel when last I looked. More testing of uploads on iphones and osx is happening as a result of the new speedtest.net app for phones, and it's not looking good.
Clientside...
iwlwifi gained support 4? 5? years ago, but as one example, the rest of the intel driver for the ax200 chip (their wifi-6) chip was just awful at the time, I have not tried it since. As always, trying to recruit testers, the ax210 is rumored to be better. Mt79 currently has the most appeal for me on my next laptop. iwl can't be used as AP, usually.
OK, it's been a year since we started speculating about doing a cerowrt II, and we ended up helping ship openwrt 22.03.1 instead. What still seems worth doing - or seems worth doing even more - out of this enormous discussion?
I started using Yggdrasil. It's an IPv6 overlay network that is fairly configuration free. I used it to get remote access to a device I was setting up at my sister's house, and a machine that runs my wife's camera on her research microscope on campus.
It provides authentication (IPv6 address derived from public key) and security (each connection end to end encrypted, though they don't talk much about the algorithm).
It's experimental but fairly stable now and very useful for accessing a device regardless of where it roams to and/or if it is inside ipv4 private address space. It restores end to end connectivity of the internet in a nice way.
after 6 months: