WAX206 Wireless AX or AC Upload Speed Disparity

Installing and Using OpenWrt
21

I tend to agree, I think there is some wifi -> ethernet issue for sure. Would this be a driver level problem then? Where do we go from here?

22

Well, unfortunately this is now mostly above my expertise.

That said, I can think of a few things:

  1. Continue to play with configuration options. For example

  2. Go back to a stable version of OpenWrt (or a more stable version of the snapshot from mid april) and check if the issue persists. Current snapshots seem to be a little unstable right now, as there are problems with buildbots (and/or code). I estimate those issue to be resolved in the near future, as there is currently lots of work going into providing a new stable release.

  3. Find somebody who is really good at debugging OpenWrt code or become really good at debugging yourself. Analyse traffic, Analyse where and when exactly the choke happens within the device etcetera. I personally am more of a user than a coder, so I cannot help there.

  4. With regard to your phone OnePlus9, you could either

    • a) donate it to a willing OpenWrt developer, who could do some more debugging.
    • b) or turn to your vendor and ask for support. You probably have spent lots of money on the the device and there is probably a warranty, so maybe even sending it back for inspection could be worth a try.
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23

Ah and of course, you can follow 802.11ax worse than 802.11ac with mt76 driver? and check if any of the pull-requests and commits mentioned there would fix your issue.

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24

Netgear WAX206 at this time is only supported by master snapshot or 23.05-snapshot. WAX206 device support was added on September 2022: https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commit;h=f6d2a23cbca61611663efb531c97efeded26e0cd

The first stable release of OpenWrt for WAX206 will probably be 23.05-rc1.

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25

Wireless Ethernet Dispatch made my intel NIC/WAX206 freak out. I could not fix it even after reboot and reverting it. I could not get it to work properly at 160 until I both, reseated the card on my motherboard and/or re-flashed the router to OEM software. 10/10 would not recommend. Plus, when I read the documentation, I found this nugget that leads me to believe it may not help for the TX from the client point of view.

In general, on MT7622 WED is only supported in TX direction (from router point of view), so CPU load reduction (from around 15% load to around 3% load when running speedtest) can only be observed if traffic is sent from the router to the client.

Of course, I re-flashed it with a newer firmware (r23238-abcb30d36c) and tried WED again. This time there was no freak out, but no improvement either.

Disabling encryption made no difference.

The OP9 is fine on Netgear firmware. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm still digging around, weighing my options. Thanks for all the good advice, I really appreciate it!

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26

damn! Sorry.

This is an important piece to know! So we know the performance degradation it is particular to when the wax206 runs OpenWrt instead of Netgear OEM.

Edit: What is the rough throughput you can reach with OEM and OP9?

27

If you are comfortable with or have the time and willingness to compile your own OpenWrt (How do I compile OpenWrt?), you could try one of those "removal of 160 MHz" commits or pull-requests, which are discussed in 802.11ax worse than 802.11ac with mt76 driver?

I personally have not yet compiled OpenWrt on my own, so cannot help there, but it would be very helpful to the community if people would start testing those more, as the number of people that have tested them is very small.

28

Hello,

Just want to report that I too have the same issue with a Google Pixel 6, but weirdly in the opposite direction. Tests to internet over a 2 Gbps WAN:
Download is somehow capped to around ~400 Mbps. Upload is fine, over 1.3Gbps.

However, testing a laptop with a Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz interface, I can get ~1 Gbps both ways.

Oddly enough, I have a second AP (Dynalink DL-WRX36, also running OpenWRT), and there I have the same limitation in the same direction as the OP, opposite of the WAX206: Upload capped at around ~400 Mbps, Download over 1.3 Gbps.

This cap doesn't happen with stock firmware, I can normally get ~ 1 Gbps both ways.

Also, no issues with wired net, they get the expected speed.

So - It seems some bizarre weirdness that seems to affect handset devices only(??)

29

can we see your network config for wireless please

30

Sure:

config wifi-device 'radio0'
        option type 'mac80211'
        option path 'platform/18000000.wmac'
        option channel '1'
        option band '2g'
        option htmode 'HT20'
        option txpower '28'
        option cell_density '0'
        option country 'US'

config wifi-device 'radio1'
        option type 'mac80211'
        option path '1a143000.pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0/0000:01:00.0'
        option channel '112'
        option band '5g'
        option htmode 'HE160'
        option country 'US'
        option cell_density '0'

config wifi-iface 'default_radio1'
        option device 'radio1'
        option network 'lan'
        option mode 'ap'
        option ssid 'Gomes'
        option encryption 'psk2'
        option key 'xxx'
        option ieee80211r '1'
        option ft_over_ds '0'
        option ft_psk_generate_local '1'
        option bss_transition '1'
        option wnm_sleep_mode '1'
        option time_advertisement '2'
        option time_zone 'GMT0'
        option ieee80211k '1'
        option he_su_beamformee '1'
        option he_bss_color '8'

config wifi-iface 'wifinet1'
        option device 'radio0'
        option mode 'ap'
        option ssid 'Gomes'
        option encryption 'psk2'
        option key 'xxx'
        option network 'lan'
        option bss_transition '1'
        option wnm_sleep_mode '1'
        option time_advertisement '2'
        option time_zone 'GMT0'
        option ieee80211k '1'
31

I have the latest snapshot and HE160 is not working. Using AX, auto, 160 basically crashes the 5GHz and will only start functioning once I switch back to 80MHz

32

HE160 is out of specification for MT7915. Support for 160 MHz channels was completely dropped by Mediatek for MT7915: [MAC80211][mt76][remove mt7915 BW160 support] Consider it as experimental.

If experimental HE160 support for MT7915 in OpenWrt works: fine. If HE160 breaks on MT7915: please analyze, what the cause is and and suggest a solution.

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