Follow on conversation for TP-Link Archer A6 v2 5GHz improvements, including user support

mixednutts · January 16, 2021, 10:58pm

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. I hope you can get is swapped on warranty. I had the router reboot once with OOM but I think most the time I would reconfigure some aspect of the wifi immediatly after it stopped working and that would restart the service and avoid the reboot.

mixednutts · January 17, 2021, 3:07am

For the 5Ghz problem I uninstalled (via System/Software) the Candela version of the ath10k firmware and installed the stock:

ath10k-firmware-qca9888 - 20201118-3 - 527.0 KB - ath10k qca9888 firmware

iperf3 testing has not produced any dropouts

pdinc-oss · January 17, 2021, 3:38am

Details? I can add to the build as a new variant.

IgorFerreir4 · January 19, 2021, 3:34pm

Could you teach me how to do it?

mixednutts · January 19, 2021, 9:30pm

I'm still experiencing issues. I tried speedtest, as someone mentioned earlier they were having problems when using this, and this started causing reboots on my device. I'll keep looking into it but will be a bit more thorough with my testing next time.

BlackScout · January 26, 2021, 7:11pm

got it.

After that traumatic event I won't even get close to a firmware image ever again.
I do wish luck with development on this device though. The fact that it has 16MB of Flash opens up a lot of opportunities for some cool packages to run on it

julianocs · January 28, 2021, 10:23am

Hj @pdinc-oss.

I saw that some people had reboot problems with the firmware.
Try using kmod-ath10k-ct-smallbuffers instead of kmod-ath10k-ct.
I think that it will solve the problem.

To do this, edit your .config file and change these values in "Wireless Drivers" section and run make .config before compile next time.


Old:
CONFIG_PACKAGE_kmod-ath10k-ct = y
CONFIG_ATH10K-CT_LEDS = y
# CONFIG_PACKAGE_kmod-ath10k-ct-smallbuffers is not set

New:
# CONFIG_PACKAGE_kmod-ath10k-ct = y is not set
CONFIG_ATH10K-CT_LEDS = y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_kmod-ath10k-ct-smallbuffers

BTW, a comment about variant3. It will never work, this is not the board-2.bin format that Openwrt is expecting.
I am working another board-2.bin this week.
I will test on my router on saturday.
If it works well, i will share with you to build a new variant.

I also recommend to you use the latest Candelatech commit from @greearb.
It has important fixes.

Regards,
Julian

iow41099 · February 2, 2021, 8:31am

Has anybody tried builds from https://github.com/gwlim/openwrt-sfe-flowoffload-ath79 and checked their performance?

humanOS · February 6, 2021, 9:40am

best and stable performance. also have some app bugs.. also enabling sfe is reducing the lan speed

shakin89 · February 6, 2021, 5:33pm

Hi guys, i've tested build 96 by @pdinc-oss variant 2 on my archer c6 eu version.
This is the exat git number
(git-21.035.74393-6515654)
OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r0+15680-36c9cf3e51

This is the result with iperf 3:
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.00-10.05 sec 261 MBytes 218 Mbits/sec sender
[ 4] 0.00-10.05 sec 261 MBytes 218 Mbits/sec receiver

And these are the results with a previous build by @julianocs:
[(git-20.138.70827-9a41673)
OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r13261-13c33f3f12
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.00-30.00 sec 826 MBytes 231 Mbits/sec sender
[ 4] 0.00-30.00 sec 826 MBytes 231 Mbits/sec receiver

The test have been made with the same machine, at 2 mt distance from the router.
not such impressive gain.
Any suggestions to gain some speed?

and when you upgrade and apply old settings, luci wont start again. Seems to be a bug from luci.
you have to add rpcd at the end of /etc/rc.local befor exit 0.
not quite a clean solution but it works.
thanks in advance for any help.

julianocs · February 13, 2021, 10:40am

Hello @shakin89.

I compiled two new versions today, feel free to test.

Juliano

P.S.: If 5g won´t work, SCP the router, delete the pre-cal-pci-0000:00:00.0.bin in /lib/firmware/ath10k and restart.

pdinc-oss · February 13, 2021, 4:10pm

Would you mind checking the build steps we have automated and identifying where it is different from yours?

pdinc-oss · February 13, 2021, 4:15pm

build marked as keep forever

julianocs · February 15, 2021, 1:43pm

Hi @pdinc-oss

The config.seed file is equal.
The difference is in the .config file.
I can share my .config file, you should replace and run make defconfig only once.

Regards,
Juliano

shakin89 · February 15, 2021, 2:06pm

Hi juliano, thank you, i've downloaded the code and will test it asap (hope in this week).
Can you remember me if i have to upload the board2.bin after flashing the router? and if yes, where?
Thanks in advance

julianocs · February 15, 2021, 6:34pm

Hi @shakin89.

It is not necessary upload board-2.bin, it is already included.

Juliano

humanOS · February 17, 2021, 3:37am

some testing result of version 2 builds

after removing pci.....bin file 5ghz is working

[   13.378997] ath10k 5.10 driver, optimized for CT firmware, probing pci device: 0x56.
[   13.400867] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[   13.407677] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: pci irq legacy oper_irq_mode 1 irq_mode 0 reset_mode 0
[   13.556457] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: fwcfg key: dma_burst  val: 0
[   15.178897] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: qca9888 hw2.0 target 0x01000000 chip_id 0x00000000 sub 0000:0000
[   15.188473] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: kconfig debug 0 debugfs 1 tracing 0 dfs 1 testmode 0
[   15.207445] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: firmware ver 10.4b-ct-9888-tH-13-5ae337bb1 api 5 features mfp,peer-flow-ctrl,txstatus-noack,wmi-10.x-CT,ratemask-CT,regdump-CT,txrate-CT,flush-all-CT,pingpong-CT,ch-regs-CT,nop-CT,htt-mgt-CT,set-special-CT,no-bmiss-CT,tx-rc-CT,cust-stats-CT,txrate2-CT,beacon-cb-CT,wmi-block-ack-CT,wmi-bcn-rc-CT crc32 43aefc1c
[   15.572409] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: failed to fetch board data for bus=pci,bmi-chip-id=0,bmi-board-id=24 from ath10k/QCA9888/hw2.0/board-2.bin
[   15.586286] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: board_file api 1 bmi_id 0:24 crc32 30f41a1e
[   17.265324] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: 10.4 wmi init: vdevs: 16  peers: 48  tid: 96
[   17.273133] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: msdu-desc: 2500  skid: 32
[   17.321688] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: wmi print 'P 48/48 V 16 K 144 PH 176 T 186  msdu-desc: 2500  sw-crypt: 0 ct-sta: 0'
[   17.332988] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: wmi print 'free: 151124 iram: 3988 sram: 56640'
[   17.566207] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: htt-ver 2.2 wmi-op 6 htt-op 4 cal pre-cal-file max-sta 32 raw 0 hwcrypto 1

100/10 lan speed test

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec   113 MBytes  94.6 Mbits/sec    0             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec   112 MBytes  93.9 Mbits/sec                  receiver

1000/10 giga lan speed

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec   331 MBytes   278 Mbits/sec  148             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.01  sec   329 MBytes   276 Mbits/sec                  receiver

72.2Mbps 2.4GHz speed

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  34.9 MBytes  29.3 Mbits/sec    0             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.02  sec  34.5 MBytes  28.9 Mbits/sec                  receiver

I do not have any 5GHz device. So i can not do any 5GHz speed test.

shakin89 · February 17, 2021, 12:50pm

Hi @julianocs,
tested version 1 and 2 on an archer c6 eu version.
First of all, i've used openwrt-ath79-generic-tplink_archer-c6-v2-squashfs-sysupgrade, is it ok or do i have to use initramfs version?
This is the log output

Wed Feb 17 13:40:21 2021 kern.warn kernel: [   51.323022] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: 10.4 wmi init: vdevs: 16  peers: 48  tid: 96
Wed Feb 17 13:40:21 2021 kern.warn kernel: [   51.330864] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: msdu-desc: 2500  skid: 32
Wed Feb 17 13:40:21 2021 kern.info kernel: [   51.366143] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: wmi print 'P 48/48 V 16 K 144 PH 176 T 186  msdu-desc: 2500  sw-crypt: 0 ct-sta: 0'
Wed Feb 17 13:40:21 2021 kern.info kernel: [   51.377413] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: wmi print 'free: 151124 iram: 3988 sram: 56640'
Wed Feb 17 13:40:21 2021 kern.info kernel: [   51.733650] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: rts threshold -1
Wed Feb 17 13:40:21 2021 kern.warn kernel: [   51.745978] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: Firmware lacks feature flag indicating a retry limit of > 2 is OK, requested limit: 4
Wed Feb 17 13:40:22 2021 kern.info kernel: [   52.360930] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: NOTE:  Firmware DBGLOG output disabled in debug_mask: 0x10000000
Wed Feb 17 13:41:23 2021 kern.info kernel: [  113.677198] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: mac flush null vif, drop 0 queues 0xffff
Wed Feb 17 13:41:41 2021 kern.warn kernel: [  131.306686] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: Invalid peer id 0 or peer stats buffer, peer: 1cb856b0  sta: 00000000

This is iperf3 output only for 5 gHz
Version 1

Powered by LuCI Master (git-21.040.83252-3c166c2) / OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r15742-d8afae0be8
iperf3.exe -c 192.168.1.14 -t 30
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-30.01  sec   575 MBytes   161 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-30.01  sec   575 MBytes   161 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Version 2

iperf3.exe -c 192.168.1.14 -t 30
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-30.01  sec   533 MBytes   149 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-30.01  sec   533 MBytes   149 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Hope this will help

julianocs · February 21, 2021, 6:39pm

Hi @shakin89

I don´t have this low throughput in my router (Archer C2 US).
I don´t have any other skills and/or knowledge to do more than that.

Anyway, i switched now to Openwrt 5.10 kernel to test.

It´s on my pCloud.

Juliano

Exeleration-G · March 21, 2021, 12:23am

I am still running this version. I would like to update my device every now and then to keep my network secure. What is the adviced strategy here? Can I just pull the latest build?