I pushed a PR to openwrt-21.02 trunk to downgrade the firmware to 9.3.2.6. Affected devices are Linksys WRT3200ACM & WRT32X. It'd be really helpful to get the PR merged if more people can confirm 9.3.2.6 solves the Wi-Fi cut-out issue.
I’m not sure. This was intended to be a hotfix to be shipped with 21.02 stable release until actual fixes on the trunk are backported to the 21.02 branch. I think it will be better to just backport those instead of downgrading the firmware. I’m working on submitting a patch for it.
Some people seems to be having issues after upgrading to 21.02.0, so I decided to grab the older drivers from 19.07, and make packages to install them on 21.02.0-rc4; this is obviously not a long term solution, but I hope it might be useful to debug the issue.
just be aware that the mlwifi has similar noticably reduced TX power issues, if you carelessly modify the country code via LuCi at all (avoid that) or if you activate radio 2 and do not manually configure country code on command line afterwards.
@eduperez I have some questions (pardon my ignorance!, and I haven’t used your files yet):
(I have a WRT1200AC ver1, and a ver2 unit)
Do you have to use your provided firmware files (mwlwifi-firmware-...ipk) with your drivers (kmod-mwlwifi_...ipk)? Or, is it possible to mix and match either one of these with what is provided with official OpenWRT releases to see what works best?
If they do need to be installed together, do they have to be installed in one (the same) opkg command?
(BTW, it may be helpful to put the answers to #1 & #2 in your README.md file)
As far as I can see, it appears as though there will be no further driver/firmware development (both official and unofficial) for these units. True? And if so, do you think this means that as OpenWRT continues developing that we may see more and more unfixable problems arise with these units in the (near) future?
Thanks so much for your help and timely compiles!!!!
Not all drivers are compatible with all firmwares, you might end with a router that does not boot. In the past, when it made sense to test different combinations, I published specific packages. Besides, the firmware has not been modified for a long time. So, no, do not try it.
Yes, install both of them on the same command, it's safer.
Yes, all development is stalled. The drivers could be developed, for example to support newer kernels, but the firmware is closed source and a dead end.
The "mwifiex" drivers only drive the third radio on the WRT3200ACM, and it is usually disabled because it has a very small antenna, and causes conflicts with the drivers for the other two radios.
The Linksys WRT1200AC is sadly (I mean, I bought one of my two units only 3 years ago) end of life/abandoned and explained why in this post, and if you go to the official website and see that the latest firmware is at least 33 months old. Since arguably your router/firewall is your first and best line of defense against hackers/malware, this is, understating it: a non-ideal place to be at. A great thing about the open source community is having the possibility to keep older devices going.
However I think even using OpenWRT on these devices is essentially over…. Back in the v18 days, and LEDEv17 before that, everything worked great. On v19, with each consecutive release I’m having more and more WiFi problems. Version 19.07.8 is essentially unusable as my 5GHz radio won’t stay connected to any of my devices, heck even the 2GHz radio is flaky (and I don’t have an exotic configuration). On a whim, I tried v21.02.0 (which I see as of very recently is now the official release!) and it was worse, simply unusable.
/rant
Having said all that, I rolled back a release and am glad to report that your compiled files for 19.07.7 work very well (been using for 2 days)!! I seem to be not having 5GHz disconnects/drops and my Sonos (on 2GHz band) is much more responsive. So if you @eduperez can’t keep up with the official releases (I really like keeping my firmware up to date for security fixes), or can’t compile, or the aging driver is just not able to work with the newer OpenWRT code, I’ll have to sell off my units and look elsewhere (hint: it will NOT be another Linksys). Thank you @eduperez for all your work! But for me, the clock is ticking on getting rid of these units as I’m now relying on you to keep them going (no pressure :-).
In what way, maybe some specifics in the 21.x release thread may serve some useful purpose; I certainly find master to be very usable on a mamba and rango, but admittedly, I turned off the radios on the rango long time passing.
In short, my devices on v21 (running on a WRT1200AC v1) would disconnect from the 5GHz radio after only minutes. Also the radio would get so unhappy, the only way to see it as a hotspot again was to reboot the unit. (v19.07.8 does the same thing but seems to last for up to a couple hours before dropping and needing a reboot).
I would spend the time to troubleshoot and upload sys logs and whatnot to help get v21 working, but since both WiFi driver and kernel firmware development is long done with these units, it doesn't seem worth everyone's time as this would probably be unsolvable.
If eduperez keeps compiling, and those files keep working, that's probably the best I can hope for.
If you have dealt with the AMSDU issue, the only other things I am aware of is some iot devices causing grief (on 88W8864) as outlined in the mwlwifi issue tracked.
Certainly mwlwifi development has ceased, but kernel, I am running 5.10 and testing 5.14?
Master most definitely fixed the wireless issues I had. I’m checking wireless commits on master which were not backported to 21.02. If I find the commit that fixes this, this will all end.