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

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
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Update in November 2021: The issue is finally fixed on upstream and OpenWrt master & 21.02 branches!

The forthcoming OpenWrt 21.02.2 release includes the fix by @nbd.

Huge thanks to @adworacz & @WildByDesign for spending weeks testing and pinpointing the issue to the 5.8 backports.

Get the OpenWrt 21.02.2 images which include the fix:
WRT3200ACM
WRT32X

Get the OpenWrt master snapshot images which include the fix:
WRT3200ACM
WRT32X

Information About the Issue

I use Linksys WRT32X as my main drive. Wireless is unstable on OpenWrt 21.02.1. Wi-Fi client does not disconnect but it won't receive/transmit any data for a minute or so. This happens regularly.
I had no issues with OpenWrt 19.07.7.

8 Likes
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Just had to make an account to say THANK YOU like a million times over. I needed this exactly I came from a DavidC build on my wrt32x and one day I decided to upgrade since its such an old build so I went to 21.02 and yea had the wireless stability issues so I went to replace the bin file for mlwifi and lost everything and it was showing generic, I HAD 2 partitions but thru all the flashing I went thru (divested and others) I ended up losing my davidc one and couldnt revert, either way this is exactly what I needed and will update you after a few days but I can tell you thru the last 20 minutes or so that ive been running it its been stable more then the other builds (would stay up for like 5 minutes or when the last person on the wifi disconnected but no new user could connect)

1 Like
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That is great to hear! I was afraid that this was an issue just for my own hardware.

I will make a pull request to get this fixed once we have enough people to confirm the issue.

@Owengerig

@dana44 I see you liked Phill’s comment. If you have the same effect on your device please reply here.

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unfortunatily it seems that the older radio firmware did not work, woke up this morning with the 5ghz radio not transmitting and showing --/99db and the 2,4ghz radio showing but not transmitting anything like it was hung, looking at system log its just flooded with dhcp requests so I rebooted hoping to catch the log entry for this issue today

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I've been using my build for a week, never had that happen. Let's see how it goes for you on the long run.

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In order to eliminate as many variables as possible, I would suggest it might be better to use a soft link as per script in post. That way all things remain the same, the only change being the BLOB in play with your image, based on where the link is pointing.

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Is there a changelog for the firmware that shows what was changed/fixed in the revisions? Also does the kernel driver version have to pair with the FW revision?

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Thanks for your input, I'd like to state that everything except the firmware blob already remains the same.
If you can check what my commit changes:

Between these commits (removed one is what OpenWrt 21.02 uses at the moment) at mwlwifi repository, only the 9.3.2.6 firmware blob was replaced with 9.3.2.12.

There's no room for other variables already. I can also simply push a pull request to the main repository after rebasing to openwrt-21.02 branch.

Looks like there's a lot of people who have stated they were having Wi-Fi stability issues on OpenWrt 21.02 on the post you referred to. I'm going to quote a few and put it on my pull request to get it merged. Thanks for leading me there.

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mwlwifi repository is not really explanatory with their commits about the changes on firmware upgrade:

Also does the kernel driver version have to pair with the FW revision?

It looks like it doesn't necessarily have to but there are fixes on the kernel driver which makes the firmware work for newer kernel versions.

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@ByteEnable no, it was just extracted from a new OEM FW that was issued, see the original thread, also issue 378.

@arinc9 your FW was not my issue, people will be comparing 21.x / master for the new BLOB, and then some other FW to test the last BLOB. Not exactly apple to apples.

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I don't quite understand what you're trying to say. Can we agree that, by your terms, FW = BLOB?

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In context FW was a reference to your OpenWrt image offered above, BLOB is a reference to that for which this thread exists and is currently being pointed at as causing a problem.

If people test one, and only one, image (does not matter which image), and change just the BLOB in play, all other things remain constant.

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Everything else is already constant with my image compared to official 21.02.0-rc3 image. Only the firmware blob is different. I explained it above.

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I've been using the 0x09030206 version of the driver on my WRT3200ACM with a divested build for a few days after having wifi issues and it seems to have helped.

1 Like
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just want to put an update here,
after the second time of the radios crashing, and also settings not staying after reboot I flashed back to stock (running for a day so far no issues). what I would like to do is flash your build (or any other build using the older radio FW if someone has one) and see if that truly fixes it, could you provide me a .img of your build since I cant use a sysupgrade from stock?
does the whole reboot wipes settings thing happen for you?

Device: WRT32x

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Can confirm this version sorted my instability issue.

Device: 32x

1 Like
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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?

My release already has squashfs-factory image, use it.

No, never had that happen.

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

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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

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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.