Linksys WRT32X 5GHz slows down

I've got the exact same router flashed with OpenWrt 19.07-SNAPSHOT r10599-180bd75973.

Not aware of issues on my part put for comparison my 5ghz also is on channel 36 ( note here when I had an issue with a Firestick and not streaming well on normal wifi I found I could only connect it on 36 when on 5ghz)

My bitrate varies a lot. In Luci it current shows 300Mbit's on 5ghz and 47 on normal. My power is set to auto and is showing 20 dBm (100mw).

I do see Radio 2 though although have it disabled. Radio0 is Marvell 88W8964 802.11nac (5ghz), Radio1 is Marvell 88W8964 802.11bgn (2.4ghz) and Radio2 is Marvell 88W8887 802.11bgnac but like I say disabled.

Not answering your questions but hope it helps for comparison

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I think the WRT32-Series only works properly on channel 36. I have read that the DFS in these routers is too sensitive and chickens out very fast which results in the switch to the non-dfs channel 36.
The 20dBm(100mW) are for your radio1, e.g. 2,4GHz, right?. Then your radio0 might be at 23dBm with 200mW if youre in a similar country.

Are you using a normal OpenWRT build or the build from Davidc502?

If you have issues with the WiFi on WRT-series, I would highly recommend you install the stable OpenWrt and use the WiFi driver/firmware packages provided by @eduperez.

Or, compile the updated WiFi driver/firmware for your specific build.

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The 19.07 release used by @heyho has a slightly newer version of mwlwifi (pci timeout change), although your issue does not sound like what was addressed by that change. The DFS heuristic does tend to the safe side, yielding many false positives and a over and out.

Edit: my bab regarding the mwlwifi version, I thought I read somewhere that you were on 18.x stable.

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It seems like the newest build from Davidc502 already has the newest drivers from eduperez.
What basically cristalizes out is:

  1. The wifi is slow after the smartphone beeing idle for some hours
  2. There are issues if the WRT32X is using DFS-Channels and he falls back to non-DFS-Channels fast.
    Other routers are running quite flawlessly with the DFS channels here so the WRT32X is quite overreacting here
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As I understand it, that community build is built from master, so the latest mwlwif version would be in the image. This has nothing to do with the eduperez mwlwifi offering which was meant ot get the latest mwlwifi onto the 18.x stable images which did not contain the current upstream offering.

I have a rango, but avoid using DFS channels. There was an issue about a month back where a particular device (firestick 4k) drove the device to its knees when using 5ghz. I changed it to 2.4, but have not checked as to the reason, or if it is still the case.

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Hmm this is sad, we already have a bunch of other routers nearby running on channel 36 so i wanted to get rid of using them. All my wireless devices have no problems with DFS channels.
From my understandings the issue with DFS is therefore also occuring with the original Linksys firmware?

Regarding mwlwifi, when checking with

opkg list-installed | grep mwlwifi

i have 10.3.8.0-20181210 installed.

I can't speak to OEM, I ran it just long enough to flash to OpenWRT. For me in NA (CA unit) running 80MHz on channel 149 works okay.

That is not the latest mwlwifi, check here; should be 2019-03-02. If that is actually the version you are running, you do not have the pcie timeout change

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The 5GHz network is down again all of the sudden...
What is thate pcie timeout issue and might that be related to any of my issues?

So the suggestion would be to try the openwrt snapshot from here.
Are there already the mwlwifi included or do i have to build them myself from the repo of eduperez?

The kernel log shows this last entries:

[81431.388396] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x100
[81431.400415] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x100
[81431.413521] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81431.630457] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81431.860539] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81432.080616] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81432.300692] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x60
[81432.520767] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81432.740841] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81432.960920] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81433.171001] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x60
[81433.381068] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81433.611145] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81433.841294] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81434.071312] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81434.291384] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81434.511458] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81434.731537] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81434.951613] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81435.181690] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81435.401776] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81435.621850] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x60
[81435.841922] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81436.072003] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81436.302081] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81436.522161] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x60
[81436.622201] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x100
[81436.635256] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x100
[81436.648361] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x60
[81436.862279] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81437.082356] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x60
[81437.182397] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x100
[81437.241164] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x100
[81437.252420] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x62
[81437.352452] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x40
[81437.532538] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready
[81437.539044] br-lan: port 3(wlan0) entered blocking state
[81437.544398] br-lan: port 3(wlan0) entered forwarding state
[84725.277773] ieee80211 phy0: staid 1 deleted
[91461.219099] ieee80211 phy0: radar detected by firmware
[91461.796836] ieee80211 phy0: channel switch is done
[91461.801704] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0x60
[126349.475803] ieee80211 phy0: staid 1 deleted

The snapshot will have the latest mwlwif (but no LuCI), not sure if that community build has held back on the version used purposely or not.

Are you sure that phy2 is not causing you grief?

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Good question about phy2...
In /etc/config/wireless there is no hint about radio2 at all. There are only configurations about radio0 and radio1.
opkg tells me that mwifiex-sdio-firmware is installed.
I bought the router in UK but live in Germany, so there might be this issue with country codes and phy2:

First things first: i will flash the newest snapshot of openwrt and configure the wifi by hand

  1. Don't use DFS on Linksys WRT AC devices running on the open source version of mwlwifi. On the WRT32X and 3200ACM running the Linksys firmware, the third radio should/may be used as a means to calibrate the "noise" floor so that DFS isn't so sensitive. The Linksys firmware contains a proprietary version of mwlwifi - the open source version does not/will not ever do this.

  2. You aren't facing the PCIE timeout issue. Example kernel log extract of it:

[ 2082.685205] ieee80211 phy0: cmd 0x9101=SetApBeacon timed out
[ 2082.691010] ieee80211 phy0: return code: 0x9136
[ 2082.695621] ieee80211 phy0: timeout: 0x1101
[ 2437.871201] ieee80211 phy0: cmd 0x9128=SetSpectrumMgmt timed out
[ 2437.877259] ieee80211 phy0: return code: 0x9101
[ 2437.881804] ieee80211 phy0: timeout: 0x1128

Note: The PCIE timeout prevention increases latency. It causes the driver to poll the firmware at such a slow rate. I am not alone in discovering this.

  1. David's build should already have the latest version of mwlwifi since it's built against master. In fact, it's even more updated since it contains a patch in master to make mwlwifi work with mac80211-5.3.

  2. phy0 = 5GHz; change: = Channel change. The most likely reason for this is that the DFS radar monitor has detected federal/aerospace/medical/industrial 5GHz emissions and has decided to boot you off. For whatever reason, your WRT32X gets hung up on the channel switch causing your throughput to decrease.

A patch/PR exists to fix this issue in OpenWrt (for the WRT32X and 3200ACM), but given the sensitive nature of playing around with region locking, it most likely will not even up in master.

Suggestions: Don't run on DFS channels. I know you're under ETSI (given your router is from GB), and thus can't access CH141+. If 36-48 is too congested, you're out of luck.

Source: I've been playing around and delving into mwlwifi's code and playing around with it. For what it's worth, the code gets the job done for non-enthusiasts. Though, it's such a mess and almost unmaintainable.

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If the OP was/is on that community build, and the above mwlwifi version is correct, than that build has apparently held the mwlwifi version back to what is currently in the 18.x stable release.

Well thats a lot of very usefull information, thank you very much.
Currently there are around 4 networks in channel 36 to 48.
Also that means it would be impossible to use VHT160 in the future.

So if i want DFS to be working, i have to use the original Linksys firmware.
The only reasons i wanted openwrt is because of the adblocker and nodered.

Perhaps i will switch and keep the original firmware then

Fair enough.

But if the mwlwifi version was held back, how would he be able to compile with mac80211-5.3-rc4 (as per his build manifest)? @davidc502, can you please clarify if you've backported the patch or running off master?

Original firmware flashed.
Wifi configured for separated 2,4ghz and 5ghz networks.
5ghz is in AC mode with VHT80. Channel is set to automatic but also tried with channel 36 fixed:
only the 2,4Ghz network is visible for my phone...
This is really starting to get very annoying

At least my Fritz Box 6490 detects the 5 Ghz network at channel 36.
When i configured my WRT32X to use channel 116 and clicked on "save configuration" and rescanned the wifi on the fritz box, the fritz box instantly said that the fritz box is now at 116.
The fritz box detects its wifi as the wifi of the WRT32X?

Dont tell me there is some "Mesh"-Hokus Pokus happening without any manual configuration of that at all. Why does the fritz box 5GHz network move to where the WRT32X 5GHz network is...

Okay, everything works good with the original firmware. Wifi was at topspeed in the morning, network is still in DFS channel 116 and can therefore work with 500mW instead of non-DFS 200mW.

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@ParanoidZoid
Do you by chance know, why the 5Ghz network is buggy with the original firmware too?
Depending on the configuration it will never go up and running.
I picked an empty DFS channel and saved the configuration, restartet the router and after 1 day still only the 2,4GHz network was up.
I have the feeling like the WRT32X needs almost perfect conditions to be able to run seamlessly.

Well, that would be my point. If mwlwifi is back at that version, where are the other players involved, mac80211 wpad or whatever may be utilised by the image. But personally, I have zero interest in checking the manifest / config.seed, I will leave that to someone running, or interested in running, an image.

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