Solved: qualcommax/ipq60xx : nss-dp driver and packet steering

Ideally, I’d like to hear from individuals here that have personal experience/background with qualcommax/ipq60xx, but certainly any pointers, especially to known reference would be appreciated.

Hardware in question is a Linksys MR7350 with qualcommax/ipq60xx. Vanilla (not NSS-build) 25.12.0 is installed. The router is set up as a wireless bridge.

Included in the base installation, there are two qca components:

root@AirDisk2:~# apk list | grep qca | grep installed
kmod-qca-nss-dp-6.12.71.2025.11.24~19c51af0-r1 aarch64_cortex-a53 {feeds/base/kernel/qca-nss-dp} () [installed]
kmod-qca-ssdk-6.12.71.2025.05.30~446db12b-r1 aarch64_cortex-a53 {feeds/base/kernel/qca-ssdk} () [installed]
root@AirDisk2:~# lsmod | grep qca
qca_nss_dp             45056  0 
qca_ssdk              876544  1 qca_nss_dp

Are these points correct for the ipq/60xx ? :

    • nss-dp (NSS-Data Plane) provides native PS (packet steering) and/or hardware acceleration at some level, reducing load on the CPU’s. [Answer: No, it doesn’t provide any acceleration. It is more of a placeholder until a new driver can be pulled into Openwrt]
    • nss-dp, without the entire set of nss drivers still provides this basic level of acceleration, without all of the capabilities in the full nss builds. [Answer: Nope.]
    • PS is generally not called for if the hardware w/ drivers already supports it. [Answer: Probably not. Might not help, might create instabilities.]
    • PS on top of nss-dp can lead to extra processor load and instability, especially in high load and low memory settings. [Answer: Certainly true, not in all cases, but very possible. ]

I ask because I’ve had some kernel panics/reboots after upgrading from 24.10.5 to 25.12.0, and I believe that there could have been some sort of change in default settings.

Kernel panics and reboots have completely stopped since I turned off PS. Working good is great, but I want to make sure I’m understanding what is going on.

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@egc : thanks for your response, it was helpful.

@vochong : thanks for your response: it clarified things for me

I cannot help you with the specifics but the packet steering executable is a somewhat blunt instrument it can easily steer interrupts which should not be steered causing a crash

Often there is a list per CPU/router with exceptions

1 Like

@vochong replied here: Qualcommax NSS Build - #5688 by vochong

There is a new upstreamable driver in the works: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/22381.

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