Linksys EA8300 and AC Band Steering

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hi

I've been using this router for a while... in fact more often in temp situations since they are dirt cheap and run OpenWRT without any day 1 problems; but today I realized for some strange reason, AC Band Steering doesn't appear to be there... that is, combining the two 5Mhz+5Mhz radios does not appear to be functional at all. When sitting right next to the router, I should be getting close to 800MB down; but instead I'm only getting around 250MB. If I disable one of the 5Mhz radios, I get the same bandwidth (regardless of which radio is deactivated at the time). The client connections in Windows report the links as AC (866 down/433 up link speed) but I'm not seeing that translated to transfer rates and all devices are all within 15 feet of the router. If I switch over to Linksys firmware, I'm getting around 780 to 820 down, on the same computers.

Am I missing an important setting somewhere?

2

Combining multiple radios is BE feature, with AC you can only steer clients to better band.
Do you use dawn or usteer?
Please help out with ubus call system board

3

A client can only connect to one SSID at a time. If your OpenWrt device has two 5 GHz radios, the term Band Steering would not apply when referring to client connections. To "band steer" would be the client switching between 5.4 and 2.4 GHz radios.

Lastly, as another user noted, your terminology is confusing because you seem to imply that your client will connect twice (on two separate 5.4 GHz radios) to get "double speed". That isn't the case and isn't the definition of "band steering".

4

Hi... Wow.. Quick responses.

Pardon my lack of knowledge in proper nomenclature.

I do not use either dawn or usteer ...

I was referring to exploiting the Router's 2x2 MU-MIMO dual 80Mhz 5Mhz radios, to get the full AC2200 bandwidth by exploiting each radio's multiple spatial streams. I figured this to be a checkbox not checked or something; but it's probably more complicated than than. Clearly, I've either screwed up configuration, or I am missing an optional configuration component necessary to make Wireless AC2200 actually achieve anything close to AC2200 rates that I can see definitively that the device is capable of (when using Linksys Firmware).

5

Your posts are very confusing.
You need multiple spatial stream support in clients (signified as NSS:2 or NSS:3 in status page)

Please connect to your OpenWrt device using ssh and copy the output of the following commands and post it here using the "Preformatted text </> " button:
grafik
Remember to redact passwords, MAC addresses and any public IP addresses you may have:

ubus call system board
cat /etc/config/wireless
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6

As already mentioned, there is no way that one single client will ever use both 5 GHz radios at the same time. Multiple clients may choose freely between the two radios and thereby distributing the the total throughput over more than one radio, but every client is still limited to the (half of-) 866 MBit/s provided by one radio,

To debug this further, check your wireless config, make sure that it's correct (correct country code, same encryption and access credentials on all radios, using the correct channels for each of the radios (keep in mind, one of them can only cover the channels <<100, the other only the ones >=100)), let it settle for ~15 minutes after rebooting the es8300 and then check with a wireless scanner (e.g. on your phone) if all expected BSSIDs/ channels are up.

--
wifi7 clients connected to a wifi7 AP may use MLO, to make a virtual connection between 2.4+5+6 GHz, but that still means one connection per band - and only applies if you have wifi7 capable gear (in other words, not yours) on both ends.

2 Likes
7 
root@Test:~# ubus call system board
{
        "kernel": "5.15.162",
        "hostname": "Test",
        "system": "ARMv7 Processor rev 5 (v7l)",
        "model": "Linksys EA8300 (Dallas)",
        "board_name": "linksys,ea8300",
        "rootfs_type": "squashfs",
        "release": {
                "distribution": "OpenWrt",
                "version": "23.05.4",
                "revision": "r24012-d8dd03c46f",
                "target": "ipq40xx/generic",
                "description": "OpenWrt 23.05.4 r24012-d8dd03c46f"
        }
}

config wifi-device 'radio0'
        option type 'mac80211'
        option path 'soc/40000000.pci/pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0/0000:01:00.0'
        option channel '124'
        option band '5g'
        option htmode 'VHT80'
        option country 'US'
        option cell_density '0'
        option txpower '24'

config wifi-iface 'default_radio0'
        option device 'radio0'
        option network 'lan'
        option mode 'ap'
        option ssid 'Notch'
        option encryption 'sae-mixed'
        option key 'Redacted1'
        option disassoc_low_ack '0'
        option skip_inactivity_poll '1'

config wifi-device 'radio1'
        option type 'mac80211'
        option path 'platform/soc/a000000.wifi'
        option channel '8'
        option band '2g'
        option htmode 'HT20'
        option txpower '30'
        option country 'US'
        option cell_density '3'
        option noscan '1'

config wifi-iface 'default_radio1'
        option device 'radio1'
        option network 'lan'
        option mode 'ap'
        option ssid 'Pegs'
        option encryption 'sae-mixed'
        option key 'Redacted2'
        option disassoc_low_ack '0'

config wifi-device 'radio2'
        option type 'mac80211'
        option path 'platform/soc/a800000.wifi'
        option channel '60'
        option band '5g'
        option htmode 'VHT80'
        option country 'US'
        option cell_density '0'
        option disabled '1'

config wifi-iface 'default_radio2'
        option device 'radio2'
        option network 'lan'
        option mode 'ap'
        option ssid 'Notch'
        option encryption 'sae-mixed'
        option key 'Redacted1'
        option skip_inactivity_poll '1'
        option disassoc_low_ack '0'
        option disabled '1'

config wifi-iface 'wifinet3'
        option device 'radio0'
        option mode 'ap'
        option ssid 'Guests'
        option encryption 'sae-mixed'
        option isolate '1'
        option key 'Redacted3'
        option network 'lan'
        option disabled '1'

I mentioned the radios being disabled as in the case of the PC's connected to each radio (high channels vs low) under Linksys delivers download speeds of 800MB+ at close range (using Linksys firmware) whereas neither of the radios (when using OpenWRT) gives me more than 275 down. Meaning, as far as I can tell, this is not a channel issue, mentioned only in case anyone suspecting this was a hardware or client issue; because the only difference is literally the firmware.

8

Upgrade to 23.05.5 (eg luci-app-attendedsysupgrade) .4 has known regression halving download speeds.

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9

…and avoid mixed mode, either wpa2 XOR wpa3, many clients don't like this at all.

Keep in mind that option disabled '1' does exactly what it claims to do.

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10

I did a fresh install instead of an update...

        "kernel": "5.15.167",
        "hostname": "OpenWrt",
        "system": "ARMv7 Processor rev 5 (v7l)",
        "model": "Linksys EA8300 (Dallas)",
        "board_name": "linksys,ea8300",
        "rootfs_type": "squashfs",
        "release": {
                "distribution": "OpenWrt",
                "version": "23.05.5",
                "revision": "r24106-10cc5fcd00",
                "target": "ipq40xx/generic",
                "description": "OpenWrt 23.05.5 r24106-10cc5fcd00"

Added Wireless Networks back in... haven't had any problems with mixed mode; but I set one to WPA2 and the other to WPA3, just to satisfy the needs of various devices that will do one; but not the other.

Unfortunately, I'm getting literally the same download speeds as before, no improvement whatsoever.

Any other ideas?

11

Show the results of test (links)
https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat
I think you are mixing up link speed to throughput.

12

I know the difference between "Link Speed" and Download speeds.

The "Link Speed" is unchanging at 866/433 (Mbps) for any of these devices regardless of Firmware.

But, since nobody will be satisfied without physical results..... I rebooted into Linksys tested, then rebooted back into OpenWRT and tested again.

Here are the results.

both
both1028×840 40.8 KB

Hope this helps.

13

Please post the link to the result of waveform or picture from speed.cloudflare.com or fast.com

14

I'm gonna pass on giving up my IP address to the World thank you very much.

The two speedtest.net results from the same destination on the same computer tells the tale.

15

No idea what you are talking about. waveform result has no ip in it.

16

Keep in mind that ipq40xx is not exactly the fastest SOC in terms of its routing/ networking performance. It's been a while since I last tested it in that capacity (still swconfig times), but for me it topped out at routing (plain ethernet/ DHCP) around ~330 MBit/s (software flow-offloading would have been needed to exceed that); it should be faster in pure AP mode (but I wouldn't expect more than ~250-350 from 2x2 802.11ac/ HE80).

I would suggest to keep an eye on htop during a speed test, I guess one of your cores hits ~100% load.

1 Like
17

What wired speed you get (not OOKLA, providers throttle it to look better)