Users needed to test Wi-Fi stability on Linksys WRT3200ACM & WRT32X on OpenWrt 21.02

Can you edit your comment and add your device? I'm going to link it to my pull request.

Do you mean the radios become disabled, like it shuts down, stops advertising the SSID, and you have to reboot the router to solve it?

yes ive noticed this happens when all clients have disconnected, itll go down and the webgui shows disabled and the radios show the generic radios turning it back on does nothing and hangs the device

will flash the image and report back with more info

Oh yeah, I had this issue. I had to remove all of the wireless interfaces and add them from scratch. I had to do this only once, after upgrading with my older configuration.

Just realised mine is resetting to default config on reboot also. Annoying :slight_smile:

EDIT: I've rolled back to 19.07 and its still defaulting on reboot. Any ideas?

You’re not using initramfs-kernel images, are you?

Thank you for creating this thread, firmware downgrade PR, and in general for helping to bringing awareness to this issue. I appreciate it.

On your Github commit for the downgrade you said:

Avoid 88W8964 firmware 9.3.2.12 for Wi-Fi instabilities it causes on Linksys WRT3200ACM & WRT32X until fixes on master branch are backported to openwrt-21.02

  • Does that mean that there are already fixes on master branch that are successful in mitigating this issue for WRT3200ACM and WRT32X devices?

  • If yes, could you please link to the commit(s)? I am just curious to learn a bit more about it since this issue has affected me as well with my WRT3200ACM.

  • Also, if there are successful patches on master branch, do you know if those fixes will be backported to openwrt-21.02 branch before it leaves release candidate stage?

Cheers!

Thank you very much.

Yes there are, rmandrad on the github PR pointed it out and I confirmed it’s fixed by compiling master branch and testing it out.

I have no idea what’s the fix on master.

I’m pretty sure it will be backported but I don’t know if it’s going to catch up to the 21.02.0 release.

P.S. That’s where my patch comes to help. It’s a hotfix until changes on master are backported. If we get this patch on the trunk before the final release, it’s good enough.

Can anyone confirm that this helps with mobile devices dropping connection? (cannot ping etc so not a DNS resolution issue and the device "remains" on the network; leaving and coming back will resume the connection until it drops again after some time)

I'm still on David's final build since it doesn't have that issue and everything newer that I have tried (divested, 21.02) has had the drops.. haven't tried rc3 yet but am glad I saw this thread, and was kind of giving up with the newer builds in general.

1 Like

This is the exact problem I was having which downgrading the firmware solved it.

Thanks for the work, arinc :slight_smile: I've tested the latest OpenWRT snapshot and I can confirm that WiFi is working as expected! But now ethernet ports 2, 3, and 4 don't get assigned IP addresses. Heck, they aren't even detected! I hope your patch makes it to trunk in time for 21.02's launch.

I'm getting off-topic but let me just put this here. Someone else also recently reported this issue, you're not alone:
http://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2021-July/035927.html

1 Like

Ah sorry about that and thank you for the link! I'll see if I can add on to it.

I ran davids a few years back and went back to stock, I have had several instances of drops on both stock and davids, however it is intermittent and a restart solves it, I found that a cooling fan helped but not solved the issue, lately still running stock I have drops on eth0, I am not sure why because it does not drop the wifi at the same time again a reboot solves it, I do however want to try the openwrt again and will see how it goes, I would hate to waste a good working device so here goes.....

device- wrt32x v1

1 Like

had this happen as well.

here is my trouble, I install to partition 2 and it installs to both partitions erasing the stock install, so I am forced to reinstall the stock install to the partition 1 and get it working again and then when I switch to the partition 2 all of my settings were reverted to the install state of luci, I had done a backup of all my setting however they simply do nothing when using the gui. All thea being said I have had little time to get the radios even working because I am chasing my tail with keeping my settings and even the stock is dropping wifi to internet connection internally so the internet drops appear even in stock setups and I have had that issue for years without being able to figure it out. I am totally getting to a breaking point with this router,note my frustration. I may try this again in the future and wish everyone else better luck than I am having!!

@arinc9 I also use a Linksys WRT3200ACM (it's on 19.07.7 right now). Before I upgrade, I want to understand what to look for...

  • How do you detect "Wi-Fi instability"?
  • What symptoms do you see on the router?
  • What symptoms do you see on the connected clients (laptops/desktops)?

Thanks.

Hey Rich.

  • We detect wireless instability by the wireless clients having trouble transferring data.
  • Everything looks good on the router.
  • Wireless clients get random drop offs, and this repeats often.

Not sure if it really fits here, but let me share it as I also have a wifi or network stability issue on OpenWrt 21.02.0-rc3. I moved from 19.07 to rc3 a few weeks ago, and I am running it on a WRT1900ACS v1 if that matters.
The issues are that after some time (30-60 min?) of no usage some clients that seem still connected to wifi do not have internet connection (other devices that just connected to wifi do not have any issue at that moment). The issue seems worse with iPhones/iPads, but maybe that's a perception as those are the most used devices. The workaround is to disconnect wifi and immediately reconnect, and then everything works again.
Just upgraded to rc4. Does anyone know if any fix to the issue was included in this release?

Same on WRT3200. Also range is reduced on 5ghz which I suspect is because of the power limit. I have relief by adding the max_inactivity parameter:

config wifi-iface 'default_radio0'
        option device 'radio0'
        option network 'lan'
        option mode 'ap'
       .
       .
        option disassoc_low_ack '0'
        option max_inactivity '43200'
2 Likes

Thanks. I will input those and test for the next few days. One additional issue I am having. When no client uses the wifi for some time, the wireless stops broadcasting: I cannot see it anymore from any client. This typically happens at night on the 5 GHz as I shut down the iPhone/iPad, and at morning I have to manually restart it... This does not happen on the 2.4 GHz as - my guess - some clients keep using it during the night. Any clues?