TP-Link EAP245-v3 stuck at 40Mhz on 5g

For Developers
#1

I just flashed the EAP245 with the snapshot recommended. Installation was fast and easy! However...

The EAP245 is getting stuck at 40Mhz on the 5Ghz band. The thing is, I am getting 40Mhz on TX (RX is 80Mhz as expected), and speeds on TX do not go any higher than 40Mhz, although everything is set to 80Mhz. The result is that 5g speeds are slow and dont really go any higher than ~190-210Mbps with iperf, which is close to the same speed as setting the radio to 40Mhz manually.

I have multiple archer A7s with openWRT to test against, and they work with 80Mhz just fine with all my devices, and are significantly faster than the EAP245 in its current state. I was hoping for an upgrade with the EAP245.

I am not familiar enough with the hardware to understand why this is happening, so I am here to reach out to the community and see if this is a familiar issue, hopefully with a fix.

I purchased the EAP245 because I am looking for a ceiling mount AP with decent MU-MIMO that works with OpenWRT. I tried the unifi nanoHD, but the newest nanoHDs are no longer supported.

Do we send the EAP245-v3 back, or is it worth working on?

Is there an alternative wall/ceiling mounted AP (working with openWRT) that would be an upgrade from an Archer A7? I realize its hard to beat the A7, but I didn't know it would be this hard.

Similar issue @DoritosVodka :

#2

There's a bug ticket for this issue, but I don't think it has been resolved. The EAP245v3 seems to have a rather uncommon 5GHz radio, so maybe there's not enough incentive to look into it.

In any case, someone has apparently found that switching to the ath10k driver results in better Tx speeds. Maybe you can give that a try?

#3

Thank you so much for the reply! Yea it did behave rather wonky.

I did try the driver method, it didn't seem to change the behavior. I think it would be great openwrt rig.

Have a great weekend.

Cheers!

#4

I'd like to go to Openwrt on the TP-Link EAP245s in my house. Unfortunately this issue appears to make it not a good idea. I hope the community will address the issue.

#5

I wonder if the EAP225 v3 has the same problem?

#6

Different, and far more common, radio. Shouldn't have this issue.

For what it's worth, I think the EAP225v3 and variants with the same radio have more users than the EAP245v3, and I haven't heard any of them complain about missing 80MHz support. :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
#7

Is there some 5MHz channel and channel width at which EAP access points with openwrt have no problem?

#8

I bought two of these units to replace my unsupported Ruckus gear and was bummed to run into this.

Switching to the non-ct driver allows me to transmit at 80mhz and give me comparable speeds to the AC1750 ruckus gear. This is a 2-3x improvement over the default ct driver in my testing.

I'll add this here since I had to dig deeper to find it. Works on 22.03-rc5

opkg update
opkg remove kmod-ath10k-ct ath10k-firmware-qca988x-ct
opkg install kmod-ath10k ath10k-firmware-qca988x
reboot
1 Like
OpenWrt router and stock AP
#9

Hello and thank you very much for providing this very important and valuable information.
I don't know if it's coincidence or not, but I was talking about this (lack of 5Ghz performance on EAP245 v3, using OpenWRT), yesterday in another topic:

What kind of download throughput are you able to get with this driver change?
With the stock firmware this device (EAP245 v3) is able to reach ~900 Mbps download.
As I said in the other thread, maximum throughput is important to me, but if I was able to get about 80-90% of the stock firmware speed, I would switch to OpenWRT, so your finding may be the key for me to switch to OpenWRT :grinning:
Again, thank you very much.

#10

If this is a solution maybe this should be changed in the source code.

#11

I really, really hope this is the solution to this problem.
This maybe the key for me (and I hope others) to switch to OpenWRT :smiley:

#12

https://forum.openwrt.org/t/why-the-switch-to-unstable-ath10k-ct/27258?u=flygarn12
Little background information.

#13

Thank you very much for the link.
I will dig a little bit myself about this stuff.
Meanwhile, I will patiently wait for @adamcstephens reply about the performance results.

Home network reconfiguring
#14

I'm not sure what these can do on stock firmware. I received them and installed openwrt immediately. My iperf3 connections on the ct driver were ~100Mbps which I found unacceptable. The non-ct driver is good enough for my needs, but perhaps isn't getting everything out of the hardware. I have wired gigabit when I really need speed and my internet is only 400/40.

connection to Linux thinkpad:

freq: 5260 MHz, ctr1: 5290 MHz, channel: 52 (width: 80 MHz), bands: 2                          │
│beacons: 6931, lost: 5, avg sig: -44 dBm, interval: 0.1s, DTIM: 2                              │
│rx rate: 520.0 MBit/s VHT-MCS 5 80MHz short GI VHT-NSS 2                                       │
│tx rate: 866.7 MBit/s VHT-MCS 9 80MHz short GI VHT-NSS 2                                       │
│tx power: 21 dBm (125.89 mW), power save: on

AP transmit test on my Linux thinkpad:

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  40.9 MBytes   343 Mbits/sec    0   1.51 MBytes       
[  5]   1.00-2.00   sec  38.8 MBytes   325 Mbits/sec    0   1.51 MBytes       
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec  33.8 MBytes   283 Mbits/sec  467    557 KBytes       
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec  40.0 MBytes   336 Mbits/sec    0    604 KBytes       
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec  38.8 MBytes   325 Mbits/sec    0    650 KBytes       
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec  31.2 MBytes   262 Mbits/sec    0    686 KBytes       
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec  30.0 MBytes   252 Mbits/sec    2    533 KBytes       
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec  28.8 MBytes   241 Mbits/sec    0    597 KBytes       
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec  25.0 MBytes   210 Mbits/sec    0    643 KBytes       
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec  32.5 MBytes   273 Mbits/sec    0    675 KBytes       
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec   340 MBytes   285 Mbits/sec  469             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.01  sec   336 MBytes   282 Mbits/sec                  receiver

AP transmit test on my M1 macbook:

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  10.2 MBytes  86.0 Mbits/sec  109    370 KBytes       
[  5]   1.00-2.00   sec  26.2 MBytes   220 Mbits/sec    0    421 KBytes       
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec  31.2 MBytes   262 Mbits/sec   12    170 KBytes       
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec  22.5 MBytes   189 Mbits/sec    3    171 KBytes       
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec  22.5 MBytes   189 Mbits/sec   11    221 KBytes       
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec  20.0 MBytes   168 Mbits/sec   18    158 KBytes       
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec  16.2 MBytes   136 Mbits/sec    4    133 KBytes       
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec  22.5 MBytes   189 Mbits/sec    2    167 KBytes       
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec  20.0 MBytes   168 Mbits/sec    4    156 KBytes       
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec  15.0 MBytes   126 Mbits/sec   12    181 KBytes       
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec   206 MBytes   173 Mbits/sec  175             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.01  sec   203 MBytes   170 Mbits/sec                  receiver

(edits: add mac, replace with correct data)

1 Like
#15

Thank you very much for doing this.

The performance jump with non-CT driver is significant (the ct driver throughput is ridiculous - 2.4Ghz tier performance / You probably got better results with 2.4Ghz directly), but, from your results, the throughput seems to take a hit compared to the stock firmware.

Just to be clear (and I'm sorry if it sounds stupid): the iperf3 tests where done between 2 local machines? Or were done between a local and a remote machine?
I'm asking this, because your thinkpad result seems relatively close to your internet limit (400/40), which could explain the performance hit.
The mac m1 result is a bit strange (just to be clear, I don't have any apple devices), because I had the idea that apple devices had top notch wireless capabilities (at least the iphones) and theres a 100 Mbps difference compared with the thinkpad. :smile:

I know that speedtest is considered unreliable compared to iperf3, but have you done some tests to compare?

On a side note: I noticed that the device seems to be on power saving mode (│tx power: 21 dBm (125.89 mW), power save: on). Do this have any influence in the throughput?

Again, thank you very much for providing all this information. I'm sure it will be very useful to many people.

#16

Yeah, all tests are done from the local network. I was a bit surprised myself that the M1 was slower.

For another comparison I just ran a fast.com test on my iPad and pulled 230Mbps, which is close to half of the speed of the Ruckus APs (R600) that is clearly maxing the Internet connection.

I haven't tried changing power save, but the reverse numbers (client transmit) are even higher so I'd not expect this to change much on the AP transmit path. Even this non-ct driver is clearly losing some of the potential of these devices.

Sadly I'd based my expectations on these devices on my eap225 outdoor which performs pretty well. Oh well, still planning to move forward with the eap245's and hope that performance can be improved.

1 Like
#17

It's really unfortunate this subpar 5Ghz performance on OpenWRT and I really hoped that the driver change could, at least, come close (80-90%) to the stock performance.

I really hope this driver issue gets fixed in the near future, so I can safely change to OpenWRT. I wish I had the knowledge to help...

As I said before, the stock firmware is decent and does everything I need, the only thing that concerns me is the security aspect of the device (lack of WPA3 and future firmware fixes).

If you find some relevant information, I would be grateful if you could ping me. I will do the same if I find something relevant.

As a side note, I wish Ruckus was more open with their firmware and that it wasn't so outrageously expensive where I am (even used). It would be the ultimate AP (It kind of is, if you have the money and don't mind to replace it as soon as the company abandons the device).

Thank you very much taking your time to answer my questions and enjoy your new toys :smile:

#18

I realized the module/firmware I swapped above was incorrect, so anybody looking at this later should ignore it. (I can't edit it any longer)

That said, I ended up returning the EAP245 v3 and purchasing Unifi 6 Lite devices instead. They're a bit pricier, even at the open box price, but are significantly faster. They're actually an upgrade over my previous Ruckus devices.

#19

I bought the EAP245 v3 a while ago specifically because it was supported by OpenWRT.
Before flashing it I found this thread and still decided to give it a go and see if I ran into the same problems.

Did some tests before flashing to get a baseline wifi speed with stock firmware.

On stock: I'm getting 450 Mbps up/down on 5GHZ wifi (almost maxing out ISP speed)
With OpenWRT: 450 up 125 down (OpenWrt 21.02.0 r16279-5cc0535800)

So quite the drop in RX performance and making it not unusable for my use case.

I noticed the discussions about it possibly being related to the CT firmware so I went down that rabbit hole. After some failed attempts I think I managed to install the non CT firmware as follows:

opkg update
opkg install ath10k-firmware-qca99x0 --force-overwrite
opkg install kmod-ath10k --force-overwrite
opkg remove ath10k-firmware-qca99x0-ct kmod-ath10k-ct

On my first attempts I did it in a different order (first opkg remove and then opkg install) but that gave me the following error on the opkg install command (i'm pretty sure I had already done opkg update prior to that)

Unknown package 'ath10k-firmware-qca99x0'.
Unknown package 'kmod-ath10k'.
Collected errors:
 * opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package ath10k-firmware-qca99x0.
 * opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package kmod-ath10k.

I wasn't able to recover from this one.. It could be unrelated to this, but for some reason I no longer had any connectivity on the device itself (ping to 8.8.8.8 timed out, packes unable to update etc. Somehow I was still connected to the internet from the outgoing eth port, not sure what was going on here).

Afterwards I reinstalled OpenWRT using the sysupgrade image and doing a factory reset I managed to get back up and running. I did the steps above (the first list of commands I mentioned). Added the --force-overwrite after getting the following error:

check_data_file_clashes: Package ath10k-firmware-qca99x0 wants to install file /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA99X0/hw2.0/firmware-5.bin

After this, I THINK I have the non CT firmware up and working. Since I'm new at this, I'm not 100% sure so correct me if I'm wrong.

root@OpenWrt:~# opkg list-installed | grep ath10
ath10k-board-qca99x0 - 20201118-3
ath10k-firmware-qca99x0 - 20211216-1
kmod-ath10k - 5.4.143+5.10.42-1-1

Sadly, I still get the same results when doing a speedtest on the 5Ghz wifi.
I really hope this can be fixed because it's a perfect device, but I'd really like to get rid of the stock firmware.

#20

I have tried the eap225v4 now and there the driver seems to work with 5GHz bw above 20MHz.

But the problem persists that full wifi connection is established and no or sporadic data transfer is on both 245v3 and 225v4.

But this problem wasn’t there on the 245v3 from the original intallation I did beginning in the winter, then it was fast like a flying rabbit! This problem started exactly when I upgraded the eap245 in the beginning of the summer and then the drivers had been updated and after that the 5GHz wifi is really buggy.