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

If the image is compiled November 25 or newer, it will contain the updated kmods. You can even open the sysupgrade image with a zip program and check date of the kmods.

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That is the master snapshot, not 21.02.

The 21.02 branch has its own daily snapshots, which are not available in the firmware selectors. Those are not linked to the download link pages, but can be found if you know the address (which is visible in the 21.02 branch sources).

But yeah, both master and 21.02 builds since 25 Nov do include the patch.

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Getting back into town, happy to see the end result being a fix merged into master and 21.02!!

Big thanks to @WildByDesign for the reliable testing, which was incredibly helpful for quickly narrowing down commits. Shout out to @arinc9 for starting this thread and getting the conversation going. And special thanks to @cotequeiroz for doing the final mac80211 bisect + patch list build out + final patch.

And of course thanks to @nbd for merging this all in.

I'm going to update all of my notes + posts to point to the true fix.

Nice job, team.

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I also put together a kernel with a new patch for McDebian and I also want to thank all the active contributors for solving this problem.
Thank you very much!

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Can anybody confirm that this IS or should be an issue starting with version 19.07.8 on a WRT3200ACM? I do see the following at the top.

I had no issues with OpenWrt 19.07.7.

Looks like some folks have had luck reverting to 19.07.8 while others have not?

Context:
I upgraded from a much older version (unfortunately unknown) yesterday to 21.02.1 without knowing about this issue and hit this very problem. Because this was disruptive at home I reverted to 19.07.8 where I am pretty sure I was seeing the same issue as well (I initially missed the version where this may have started). I have temporarily reverted to stock firmware for now, I will be back for 21.02.2 though. Wanted to confirm that I am not missing something else that might be going on.

I also wanted to also say thank you to everybody on this thread.

This issue should not be present I 19.07.8 as that uses mac80211 based on kernel 4.19, where the culprit commit is not present.

The year 2020 commit has not been backported into https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/log/net/mac80211/agg-tx.c?h=v4.19.218

Note that there are various problems with mwlwifi, partially depending on the WiFi chip and its firmware. This was not the only bug there...

Note that there are various problems with mwlwifi, partially depending on the WiFi chip and its firmware. This was not the only bug there...

OK thank you, I may very well have found/experienced something else here then. Its only been about 10h or so, but stock is working for me so something was going on here after my OpenWRT < 19.07.8 upgrade to 21.02.1 after a year or more of stability. Is there something else generally tracking the other issues specifically with WRT3200ACM or related devices? I am going to try again at 21.02.2 but unsure if I should be tracking anything else ATM. (and sorry, little light on specific / debug info)

I can't believe that this is finally going to get fixed. I can't tell you how many times I thought I fixed this by using a particular setting only to have another cut out later that week. Thank you for starting this thread and getting the ball rolling on this.

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Wi-Fi client does not disconnect but it won't receive/transmit any data for a minute or so. This happens regularly.

Have exactly the same behaviour on my Linksys WRT1200ac after upgrading to OpenWrt 21.02.1 r16325-88151b8303

Its awesome that there is a fix and its already merged, thanks everyone for good job!

As it is already merged can I safely test it with https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=SNAPSHOT&target=mvebu%2Fcortexa9&id=linksys_wrt1200ac image, right ?

I think these two packages are identical to all WRT series. I have installed them successfully on a WRT1900ACS and running smooth for 5 days already.

I suggest to first download backup for your current configuration and also make sure you have a working copy on the alternate partition:

So you can return to it in case device won't boot but I don't expect any problems.

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Like @hnyman mentioned to @justinmburrous, you might try the latest 21.02-SNAPSHOT:

The 21.02 branch has its own daily snapshots, which are not available in the firmware selectors. Those are not linked to the download link pages, but can be found if you know the address (which is visible in the 21.02 branch sources).[...] 21.02 builds since 25 Nov do include the patch.

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I installed OpenWrt SNAPSHOT, r18244-101300b842 on my Linksys WRT1200ac an hour ago.
So far so good.
thx for help!

I might try that in a bit on my second partition. I was in a bit of a rush to get wifi stable again when I tried a few different builds, pretty sure I tried a snapshot a few days old now as well as 21.* and 19.* older versions. I was not all that methodical about it and discovered this thread late into testing different versions. When I try the latest I will make sure to pay more attention to versions in-case I encounter encounter anything.

I believe that's a master snapshot, not a 21.02 snapshot, but it still has the fix.

I am having a wifi problem with an iPhone (of course, Apple again) on my WRT3200ACM that has been happening since this fix has been implemented but did not happen with Davidc502's old build.

iPhone has been disconnecting from 5GHz band occasionally and when it does, it can no longer visibly see the 5GHz network. The 5GHz network is visible to other devices on the network and still functional for those other devices during this time.

After several minutes, it can see the 5GHz band again and when you try to connect, the iPhone says that the password is incorrect. There is nothing wrong with the password but the iPhone seems to think so. The only way to solve this is to reboot the router.

Unfortunately, there is nothing in the system log when this happens. The only thing that I get is the usual disassociated due to inactivity an hour later.

The reason why it is an hour later is because I had tried setting option max_inactivity '3600' to fix the problem initially. But clearly modifying options disassoc_low_ack '0', option max_inactivity '3600' and option wpa_group_rekey '86400' does nothing to help mwlwifi devices.

It seems to happen after only a few minutes of inactivity. The screen of the iPhone may have been turned off for 3-4 minutes and when you turn the screen back on, 5GHz network has disappeared.

This issue only seems to happen once per day or every other day.

I've jumped to master to test this out and things are looking fine for the mac80211 issue. However, I've also seen another issue with a single Android Pixel 4.

The device was connected fine to the 5 ghz network for about 24 hours when it dropped off and refused to reconnect (even after some reboots of the phone and router). The WiFi network appears to be functional: other devices are connecting as normal, even after the Android glitched out.

I think this is the syslog from when the Android fell off the network. Unfortunately I had random MACs turned on so I am not really sure what device it is but my confidence is high that this is it. For future testing I've disabled random MACs on the phone so I can trace this better in the future.

Wed Dec  1 22:52:41 2021 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 76:fa:85:62:d0:1d IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 2)
Wed Dec  1 22:52:42 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-POSSIBLE-PSK-MISMATCH 76:fa:85:62:d0:1d
Wed Dec  1 22:52:43 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-POSSIBLE-PSK-MISMATCH 76:fa:85:62:d0:1d
Wed Dec  1 22:52:44 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-POSSIBLE-PSK-MISMATCH 76:fa:85:62:d0:1d
Wed Dec  1 22:52:47 2021 kern.debug kernel: [73766.563449] ieee80211 phy1: staid 2 deleted
Wed Dec  1 22:52:48 2021 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 76:fa:85:62:d0:1d IEEE 802.11: authenticated
Wed Dec  1 22:52:50 2021 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 76:fa:85:62:d0:1d IEEE 802.11: deauthenticated due to local deauth request

Interesting, I am seeing lots of AP-STA-POSSIBLE-PSK-MISMATCH also. Although I am getting that after that failure on 5GHz, but not until the iPhone tries to connect to the 2.4GHz band.

This setting, salvaged from over here, appears to let the devices that weren't connecting work again.

uci set wireless.@wifi-iface[0].iw_qos_map_set="none"
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My feedback:
After 2 days running (OpenWrt SNAPSHOT, r18244-101300b842 ) on my Linksys WRT1200ac - issue has gone, 5GHz WiFi is stable enough, even with configured WPA3/WPA3 mixed and 802.11w optional.
Big thx to everyone for fixing it!

I am going to additionally confirm that with a 21.02 snapshot r16392-36848e2c29 specifically, things are back in normal worker order. Just a data-point, thanks again to all.