FWIW, I have been enabling it via the mt7915e module file:
root@AP-Office:~# cat /etc/modules.d/mt7915e
mt7915e wed_enable=Y
root@AP-Office:~# cat /sys/module/mt7915e/parameters/wed_enable
Y
A couple things around this... I have only been looking at bind and frankly didn't even explore enough to realize there was a separate entries file as well. But FWIW, when WED seemed to be working, I could watch the bind file and see the offloaded flows coming and going.
(For the curious, I use this: watch -n0.1 'cat /sys/kernel/debug/ppe0/bind')
However, the "packets=0 bytes=0" is now resolved as of these commits from @nbd, I believe: Okay, after looking at entries I now see what you're saying. I can confirm I see only "packets=0 bytes=0" there. These commits I posted below did address the "packets=0 bytes=0" for bind specifically:
When I do actually see an offloaded flow, I can confirm I see these counters increasing over the life of that flow.
But, the behavior around what gets offloaded and consistency of it is pretty poor at this point from what I can tell on my APs, if bind is the source of truth as to whether flow offloading is actually occurring.
A few more questions for you, sir, if you don't mind...
I have updated my firewall config on one of my APs to include the SW & HW offloading enablement. However, as I mentioned I run my 3x RT3200s as "dumb APs"/WAPs. So, I have always had the firewall service itself disabled.
In the name of experimenting, I started the firewall service post update of the offloading settings and was greeted with this:
root@AP-Office:~# /etc/init.d/firewall start
Hardware flow offloading unavailable, falling back to software offloading
I assume that was expected, but could you let me know if you recognize something I might be missing here? Is it true that I should now have the firewall service enabled to have the offloading settings applied properly?
root@AP-Office:~# cat /etc/config/firewall
config defaults
option input 'ACCEPT'
option output 'ACCEPT'
option forward 'REJECT'
option flow_offloading '1'
option flow_offloading_hw '1'
root@AP-Office:~# cat /etc/config/bridger
config defaults
# example for blacklisting individual devices or bridges
# list blacklist eth0
root@AP-Office:~# /etc/init.d/bridger status
running
And it should stay disabled (i meant firewall in dap mode).
Also i have disabled ip forwarding.
I enabled blacklist for eth0 and the 2.4ghz device radio in bridger.conf.
Using myself dap mode only on my ax6s.
I have these on rc.local to ensure persistence even after sysupgrades:
Hey, I am running four e8450 as access points but do not have IP forwarding disabled. Could you explain or point me to docs I could read more why it is required?
I have always configured my dumb APs in the same way. But I'm not clear on how the SW & HW offloading that @daniel mentioned would take effect without the firewall service running. Hoping someone can bring some more clarity to that for the good of this group.
I am curious about this, as I see that @grzesiczek1 is as well. I very much appreciate some more information about what the purpose is there.
It sounds like you have WED enabled if you're using bridger. Are you seeing the flow offloading (as indicated by watching the bind file) stop after some time?
Disable ip forwarding: It's the last line pasted 2 posts above this from my rc.local.
I have watched myself the bind output and was not offloading at all for me.
Apparently setting enable_wed =Y dissapeared from modules.
After i fix that and reboot i could see 1 ffloar, after that nothing.
I havent check this for quite while but i'm sure it worked before, i could see alot of data output watching the ppe0 bind.
I run this build, just upgraded: OpenWrt SNAPSHOT, r22610-28ce677fa7
Indeed--similar story here from what I'm seeing. I haven't paid close enough attention to a clock to put a definite time frame against when it stops, but it doesn't run long.
It is interesting because it used to run a lot longer before stopping. Not sure if/where a regression occurred.
But, oddly enough, sometimes offloaded flows just pop up in ppe0/bind and work again for some time without restarting anything. It is just wildly inconsistent right now.
Then there's this:
Do you see a high amount of retries when you have a flow go through ppe0?
@_FailSafe I'm working with the new device based MT7681b (cudy wr3000) and I can confirm bridger failing same way for me
I've monitored /sys/kernel/debug/ppe0/bind and when there is no new stream /etc/init.d/bridger restart ;watch -n 1 'cat /sys/kernel/debug/ppe0/bind'
will enable WED
also I cannot confirm high retries in compare to not using ppe0 on my device .
I don't see open ticket in issues both for openwrt/openwrt and nbd168/bridger . Do we know when bridger started failing ? Maybe will be good time to open an issue ticket
In the ppe0 folder there is another file, watch that one, it shows alot of packets that should be offloaded but intead they are all zeroes for the NEW corresponding src/dest/MAC.
I don't have access atm, but i did captured the output in /tmp by redirecting stdout to a file.
Not yet. It's going to take a lot of time to track this one down. We're outside of the wireless driver and in the network subsystem. Which I don't know if I'm just wasting my time because some of the network code is many versions behind the latest Linux kernel, and the changes are significant. I'd hate to pour 100 hours into something that is already fixed. I am at a fork in the road and I don't know what direction to take.
@daniel A few more questions for you, sir, if you don't mind...
I have updated my firewall config on one of my APs to include the SW & HW offloading enablement. However, as I mentioned I run my 3x RT3200s as "dumb APs"/WAPs. So, I have always had the firewall service itself disabled.
In the name of experimenting, I started the firewall service post update of the offloading settings and was greeted with this:
root@AP-Office:~# /etc/init.d/firewall start
Hardware flow offloading unavailable, falling back to software offloading
I assume that was expected, but could you let me know if you recognize something I might be missing here? Is it true that I should now have the firewall service enabled to have the offloading settings applied properly?
root@AP-Office:~# cat /etc/config/firewall
config defaults
option input 'ACCEPT'
option output 'ACCEPT'
option forward 'REJECT'
option flow_offloading '1'
option flow_offloading_hw '1'
root@AP-Office:~# cat /etc/config/bridger
config defaults
# example for blacklisting individual devices or bridges
# list blacklist eth0
root@AP-Office:~# /etc/init.d/bridger status
running
I understand that, but my point is that @daniel posted this some days ago:
But @Brain2000 and I raised questions specifically around the statement of "In both cases you also need to switch on hardware flow offloading..." because documentation for WED seems to state SW/HW offloading is not required.
So, my question back to @daniel was meant to clarify, if you enable the HW & SW offloading options in /etc/config/firewall, then what, besides the firewall service, would care about those settings? Hence, does the firewall service itself need to be running? Does bridger look for those settings?
I was just trying to get to the bottom of the reasoning from @daniel's perspective, given his expertise at the code level of much of this. And he confirmed the answer here:
