WRT3200ACM DHCP Lease / Raspberry PI

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I am going nuts. Hardware Linksys WRT 3200 ACM with latest openwrt. I have about 30 ESP8266 devices and 3 Raspberry PIs in my network. All ESP8266 connect and get DHCP, so does my Chromebook. Linux devices, including Raspberry PIs won't get DHCP leases. 2.4 Ghz 'n' mode only.

The very same hardware with stock OS works (more or less) ok, it also works fine with a Zyxel Armor Z2 and their version of *Wrt. I installed openwrt on the Linksys to get more flexibility. DHCP works fine if Raspberry PI is hard wired.

tcpdump confirms the the bootp is broadcasted. I have "unknown DSAP" entries (0x62, 0x64) on the tcpdump which may indicate WPA/WPA2 encrypted answers, but whatever they are, Linux seems unable to deal with them. I also see plain text arp requests in the dump, which confuses me even more.

Log on the openwrt shows no incoming requests though.

EDIT: Forcing tkip on the openwrt/linksys makes the wifi going on and off.

Out of options.

2

This is a known problem of the Marvell (now NXP) 88W8964 wireless chipset and its driver (respectively its proprietary firmware blob). Interoperability issues have been part of its history since day one, especially in combination with IoT devices (and the commonly used Espressif esp8266/ esp32 chipsets). Marvell never fixed it, and its new owner NXP has discontinued support for these chipsets when they bought Marvell's wireless division. Given that mwlwifi is not mainline and depends on a fullmac-like proprietary firmware blob, chances for this to get fixed in the future are somewhere between minimal and non-existent. If you can, I'd revert back to Linksys' official OEM firmware and return the device, it's not going to be fixed.

This device is supported by OpenWrt just fine, with good wireless support as well - given its dual-firmware design you can easily try installing OpenWrt 19.07.7 to it and give it as test-run (retaining the ability to switch back to the unchanged ZyXEL OEM firmware with a mouse click (via luci-advanced-reboot), the upgrading works just like on the Linksys devices, in a round-robin fashion, always upgrade the other -currently not booted- firmware, so as long as you don't upgrade OpenWrt from itself, you'll keep the OEM firmware present on the inactive partition set; yes, even if you would lose it, it can be reinstalled easily).

2 Likes
3

This us weird... as @slh has commented, this device has issues. But are the EST8266 devices who have issues, not the RPi. Can you share your wireless config, please?

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4

Hello, I have a wrt3200acm. Since I create a file in /etc/modules.d/mwifiex with this content:
mwifiex reg_alpha2 = FR
I have no problem with the wifi.
iw reg get

global
country FR: DFS-ETSI
(2400 - 2483 @ 40), (N / A, 20), (N / A)
(5150 - 5250 @ 80), (N / A, 23), (N / A), NO-OUTDOOR, AUTO-BW
(5250 - 5350 @ 80), (N / A, 20), (0 ms), NO-OUTDOOR, DFS, AUTO-BW
(5470 - 5725 @ 160), (N / A, 26), (0 ms), DFS
(5725 - 5875 @ 80), (N / A, 13), (N / A)
(57000 - 66000 @ 2160), (N / A, 40), (N / A)

phy # 2
country FR: DFS-ETSI
(2400 - 2483 @ 40), (N / A, 20), (N / A)
(5150 - 5250 @ 80), (N / A, 23), (N / A), NO-OUTDOOR, AUTO-BW
(5250 - 5350 @ 80), (N / A, 20), (0 ms), NO-OUTDOOR, DFS, AUTO-BW
(5470 - 5725 @ 160), (N / A, 26), (0 ms), DFS
(5725 - 5875 @ 80), (N / A, 13), (N / A)
(57000 - 66000 @ 2160), (N / A, 40), (N / A)

phy # 1
country FR: DFS-ETSI
(2400 - 2483 @ 40), (N / A, 20), (N / A)
(5150 - 5250 @ 80), (N / A, 23), (N / A), NO-OUTDOOR, AUTO-BW
(5250 - 5350 @ 80), (N / A, 20), (0 ms), NO-OUTDOOR, DFS, AUTO-BW
(5470 - 5725 @ 160), (N / A, 26), (0 ms), DFS
(5725 - 5875 @ 80), (N / A, 13), (N / A)
(57000 - 66000 @ 2160), (N / A, 40), (N / A)

phy # 0
country FR: DFS-ETSI
(2400 - 2483 @ 40), (N / A, 20), (N / A)
(5150 - 5250 @ 80), (N / A, 23), (N / A), NO-OUTDOOR, AUTO-BW
(5250 - 5350 @ 80), (N / A, 20), (0 ms), NO-OUTDOOR, DFS, AUTO-BW
(5470 - 5725 @ 160), (N / A, 26), (0 ms), DFS
(5725 - 5875 @ 80), (N / A, 13), (N / A)
(57000 - 66000 @ 2160), (N / A, 40), (N / A)

This configuration will depend on your router. I don't know if it has something to do with it.

5

I have three different RPi connected to my WRT3200ACM with infinite lease and they work fine but they are connected using the ethernet cable.

6

Unfortunately, I already re-installed the original OS on the router. But the Raspberries still can't connect. The ESPs do connect, but drop often and won't reconnect sometimes. Connecting via Ethernet works fine. It seems to be an WPA2 issue, because I used WPA1 on previous routers. However - I tried all possible or suggested changes on the wpa_supplement file to no avail. So - no luck :frowning:

7

Same here. Connecting via Ethernet works ok.