Installing patches guidance

Hello everyone and sorry in advance for the long post.

I've recently switched from stock firmware to OpenWrt 21.02.1 on both of my routers (TP-Link Archer C7(v5) and D-LINK DIR-859(A3), primarily for SQM features it offers as I've been having random connection drops (usually when new user joins the network or inactive one becomes active), for which I initially thought bufferbloat is the cause, as all devices would remain connected to the network while ping tests would show request timed out on all devices and none would be able to do anything on the web. After digging further I'm now suspecting something else.

I'm having asymmetric Cable 250/25 connection with ISPs Gateway (Ubee EVW32C) being the main one, and since bridge mode is disabled by ISP, I used DMZ to push all traffic to Archer C7, and from it to the rest of my wired/wireless devices (DIR-859 is used as wired dumb AP just to cover 2nd floor of the house).

Worth noting, when I unplug both routers & AP and all devices remain connected (4Pc's, Laptop & 2 Android Boxes) directly to the ISP's Gateway (with 1 unmanaged gigabit switch in between), the issue doesn't appear.

Now, to the topic itself. Both of my routers run on QCA9563, which seems to be having issues with Rx ring buffer load that can cause exact same problems I'm experiencing. I've found an accepted solution here but as a noob with OpenWrt and Linux in general, I have no idea how to install it on the current devices and try out if things will get sorted out.

First I would like to see if there is a point in installing this or it's automatically added in build 21.02.1, and of course, after that, if it's not, what is the process of installing the .patch file on the devices I have.

I've read the patch part on the wiki page, but it raises more questions than it answers.

Thanks in advance for the patience and help.

are you sure, that patch is 5 years old, it should already be in the openwrt code/kernel since ages.

Those are my thoughts as well. Been going through the release notes and found it here:

I would assume that it's included in the newer versions as well, but is there any way to check this so I can rule this problem out?

only way would be to look at the code, the file names are there (xxxxxxxx.c / .h).
code added is marked by +, code removed is marked by -.


 .../linux/ar71xx/files/arch/mips/ath79/dev-eth.c   |    5 +++++
 .../mips/include/asm/mach-ath79/ag71xx_platform.h  |    2 +-
 .../net/ethernet/atheros/ag71xx/ag71xx_main.c      |   16 ++++++++++++++++
 3 files changed, 22 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

Thanks a lot for the assistance :slight_smile: Things are getting heated.

"Worth noting, when I unplug both routers & AP and all devices remain connected (4Pc's, Laptop & 2 Android Boxes) directly to the ISP's Gateway (with 1 unmanaged gigabit switch in between), the issue doesn't appear."

This part is not true anymore. A few minutes after raising this, the same thing occurred with devices connected directly to the ISP's Gateway after ~6-7h of stability. Nonetheless, I'll check the files you mentioned, and thanks for narrowing it down, but I'll probably end up with ISP tech support eventually :slight_smile: