Getting 5Ghz band to work in WRT3200ACM

[ivpatrick]

Hi,

I have a Linksys WRT3200ACM running with the latest snapshot of Openwrt on it.

The 2.4Ghz band works fine. However I cannot get the 5Ghz to work properly. For some reason, even if it shows enabled, it does not sustain the connection made to it. The connection drops off from any device trying to connect to it (phone, laptop). After this happens the connection reattempt does not work at all.

If I continue in this manner, the 2.4GHz stops working too and I have to reboot the router to get back to normal.

Please let me know how to get a stable 5Ghz connection in openwrt on the wrt3200acm.

Also, how do I use beam-forming when both the 2.4 and 5Ghz are active?

Thanks for the help.

[flygarn12]

@ivpatrick

Please let me know how to get a stable 5Ghz connection in openwrt on the wrt3200acm

If you search the forum for “wrt3200acm” you will get like humongous amount of hits with failed 5GHz questions.

This is the only problem with this device and it won’t get fixed because the chip manufacturer doesn’t exist anymore.

[ivpatrick]

Thanks. So this means the 5ghz is never going to work is it?
This is sad if that is the case

[tapper]

Hi the driver for the 5 GHZ radio on the wrt3200acm is called mwlwifi.

Commits · kaloz/mwlwifi

It has not bin updated for a long time and was buggy to start with. The best thing you can do is just use the wrt3200acm as a router and get a AP to use for wifi. Or like I did get a new box and put the wrt3200acm in a parts box. The CPU in the wrt3200acm is quite fast so is good for routering and all that stuff.

[hnyman]

It works pretty ok if you restrict yourself to really basic settings.

Wpa2, no 802.11r, no 802.11w, channel 36, max 80 widht

Avoid wpa3 wpa2/wpa3 mixed mode.

[ivpatrick]

Thanks for the tip
Let me try in sometime and tell you if it was usable.
Is there any explicit way of enabling beamforming or is that something done internally.

[ivpatrick]

Thanks for this info. I feel kind of bad hearing this as I bought this router thinking it would be well supported for a few years. Unfortunately it looks like this has shattered all that

I am trying to get another router. Lets see how that does on the openwrt.

Do you have any idea on how this beamforming can be made to work in openwrt? Is it something we cannot enable/disable like some checkbox?

Thanks

[ivpatrick]

@hnyman what you suggested seems to have helped. Thank you.
Do you have any idea on that beamforming? Is it some option to enable or set? Please do let me know if yes and how to do it as it seems to be a helpful feature to use.

Thanks

[tapper]

Some info here;

Does OpenWrt firmware support Beamforming + MU-MIMO- just for the record?

ath10k and hostapd both support beamforming and MU-MIMO. There's actually not much to it other than listing a few capabilities in hostapd. See: https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/ath10k/configuration#mu-mimo_configuration I don't know whether that has been implemented in OpenWrt as don't have any device that supports MU-MIMO or beamforming. But you could easily check that if you are running OpenWrt on a device that supports it. Just connect via SSH and run: grep vht_capab /var/…

[anon4457646]

@hnyman

max 80 widht

it work over that

[ivpatrick]

Thanks for this.
It looks like that option is present in the capabilities

# grep vht_cap /var/run/hostapd*.conf
/var/run/hostapd-phy0.conf:vht_capab=[RXLDPC][SHORT-GI-80][SHORT-GI-160][SU-BEAMFORMER][SU-BEAMFORMEE][MU-BEAMFORMER][MU-BEAMFORMEE][RX-ANTENNA-PATTERN][TX-ANTENNA-PATTERN][RX-STBC-1][SOUNDING-DIMENSION-4][BF-ANTENNA-4][VHT160][MAX-MPDU-11454][MAX-A-MPDU-LEN-EXP7]

So mostly the beamforming is actually being used? Is there any real world scenario to test this? Just wanted to be sure I understand its working.

Thanks.