WRT3200ACM Wifi Problem

Good day, new happy OpenWRT User here.

I made a setup for my 30 guys here so we can have some decent wifi on a very poor Satelltite connection.

I had a WRT3200ACM shipped here and imediately installed OpenWRT so I could adblock and install YAmon for some monitoring.

Everything work fine but the Wifi signal is horendous on both 5 and 2.4ghz. I can't seem to find a solution and have to rely on uor old router on a stock tp-link firmware for the wifi and my WRT3200ACM for DHCP and LAN.

So far I have tried to manually upgrade my mwlwifi driver from the eduperez latest release but it did not seem to fix the problem and I actually had to restore from a previous achive. I had lost all ability to change channel mode etc in LuCi so I decided it was no bueno.

I am getting the feeling that there is a lot of wifi issue on my type of machine since .2 release. Is it still possible to downgrade to .1? How would it affect my YAmon setup?

I am super new and its my first time on Linux but the Driver upgrade went flawlessly, maybe there is some other package to change for wifi. can I downgrade or upgrade other thing but stay on the latest openWRT release?

The drivers for this device are far from perfect, but my experience is much better, with any recent version of the drivers.

Either your unit is faulty, or there is something specific to your set-up that makes it behave specially bad.

Perhaps you could share more details about your set-up.

That's too many users for one access point.

Could you post here the settings from uci show wireless at least?
Are there obstacles, walls, doors, trees between the antenna and the clients?
Are you in a rural area or dense residential area?
Have you assigned channel randomly or based on some site survey with some wifi analyzer (nothing fancy, there are smartphone apps)?

Are they positioned in the same place more or less?

root@OpenWrt:~# uci show wireless
wireless.radio0=wifi-device
wireless.radio0.type='mac80211'
wireless.radio0.hwmode='11a'
wireless.radio0.path='soc/soc:pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0'
wireless.radio0.country='CA'
wireless.radio0.legacy_rates='1'
wireless.radio0.htmode='HT20'
wireless.radio0.txpower='24'
wireless.radio0.channel='36'
wireless.default_radio0=wifi-iface
wireless.default_radio0.device='radio0'
wireless.default_radio0.mode='ap'
wireless.default_radio0.ssid='WELFARE_PCV2'
wireless.default_radio0.encryption='psk2'
wireless.default_radio0.key=''
wireless.default_radio0.network='lan'
wireless.default_radio0.disabled='1'
wireless.radio1=wifi-device
wireless.radio1.type='mac80211'
wireless.radio1.hwmode='11g'
wireless.radio1.path='soc/soc:pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:02:00.0'
wireless.radio1.country='CA'
wireless.radio1.distance='300'
wireless.radio1.txpower='30'
wireless.radio1.htmode='HT20'
wireless.radio1.channel='auto'
wireless.radio1.legacy_rates='1'
wireless.default_radio1=wifi-iface
wireless.default_radio1.device='radio1'
wireless.default_radio1.mode='ap'
wireless.default_radio1.network='lan'
wireless.default_radio1.wmm='0'
wireless.default_radio1.key='
*'
wireless.default_radio1.ssid='TESTINGXXX'
wireless.default_radio1.encryption='none'
wireless.radio2=wifi-device
wireless.radio2.type='mac80211'
wireless.radio2.hwmode='11a'
wireless.radio2.path='platform/soc/soc:internal-regs/f10d8000.sdhci/mmc_host/mmc0/mmc0:0001/mmc0:0001:1'
wireless.radio2.htmode='VHT80'
wireless.radio2.country='US'
wireless.radio2.legacy_rates='1'
wireless.radio2.channel='auto'
wireless.radio2.__toggle='Disable'

Thanks for the reply!

So far accessing it dosent seem to be an issue. We are sharing only 4 Mb upload 1Mb download so if someone gets dropped we probably dont notice much.

We are in an open area with no tree for hundreds of kilometer and other than 1 other wifi acces point, the closest wifi would be the next city over (80Km) so I was using auto for a while but I have tried manually changing channel and checking the output in windows CLI.

We do have 1 big signal dampener, the access point in in a tent made of cotton and plastic? but the place I am trying to reach is lined with aluminum foil. Furthest user is 50 meter away but in the tent you can't even access.

My current solution is a TP-LINK Archer C59 and placed in the exact same spot (with the OpenWRT Wifi disabled to void interference) I get a lot more signal and can actually use it everywhere on 2.4Ghz 20Mhz spacing? 802.11N

on a netsh wlan show interface I get 72% on the TP-Link and cant acces at all on the WRT3200ACM when testing in the worst spot.

p.s. Country code is CA as my TP-LINK is from canada and I cant change the certification in it. Neighbour is using a US one but they are pretty far (200-300 metre)

Didint expect you to anwer directly. Thanks for your time and your work.

I may not have installed it properly.

I removed both KMOD-MwlwIFI and mwlwifi firmware from the LuCi Software interface then downloaded both using the -O /tmp/test.apk and -O/tmp/test2.ipk then opkg install --force-downgrade /tmp/test.apk.ipk `opkg install --force-downgrade /tmp/test2.apk.ipk

I did not get any error but after messing around my wifi config I tried reverting back and lost a bunch of control in LuCi so I restored previous config. I ended up with two firmware installed but kept the mwlwifi-firmware-88w8964 2018-11-14-81413aa9-1

No wonder, as you have disabled the main radio and are only using the exotic surplus radio without antenna.

This radio0 is the main 5Ghz radio that actually uses mwlwifi. Enable it.

This radio2 is the extra radio, not to be used, meant for radar detection or so. It has no antenna. It does not even use the mwlwifi driver... Disable it. ( Note that it has different hardware path sdhci...mmc.... While normal radios in 3200 are connected to pcie)

You also have conflicting country codes (CA, CA and US), which totally screws things for mwlwifi. You need to have the same code in all three radios.

This radio1 is the normal 2.4 Ghz radio:

I tested the 5g but I am only using the 2.4 at the time. Since it has better range I figure I would troubleshoot it first and I didn’t want the 5 interfering.

Radio2 is disabled, I will change the country but should it matter since it’s off in LuCi. Is there another way to disable I don’t know?

Envoyé de mon iPhone

Yes, it matters - the kernel still intersects the regulatory domain settings, regardless of if the activity state of the radio (as long as the driver is loaded) - and while intersections of different regdomains are always bad (as in reducing your allowed channels/ power levels), mwlwifi in particular doesn't like this situation at all.

1 Like

I had to add to the radio2 in order to change the country code. No change in signal strength. I will pay attention to that in the future.

Im also testing without encryption on the radio1 keeping radio0 disable for the time being

root@OpenWrt:~# uci show wireless
wireless.radio0=wifi-device
wireless.radio0.type='mac80211'
wireless.radio0.hwmode='11a'
wireless.radio0.path='soc/soc:pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0'
wireless.radio0.country='CA'
wireless.radio0.legacy_rates='1'
wireless.radio0.htmode='HT20'
wireless.radio0.txpower='24'
wireless.radio0.channel='36'
wireless.default_radio0=wifi-iface
wireless.default_radio0.device='radio0'
wireless.default_radio0.mode='ap'
wireless.default_radio0.ssid='WELFARE_PCV2'
wireless.default_radio0.encryption='psk2'
wireless.default_radio0.key=''
wireless.default_radio0.network='lan'
wireless.default_radio0.disabled='1'
wireless.radio1=wifi-device
wireless.radio1.type='mac80211'
wireless.radio1.hwmode='11g'
wireless.radio1.path='soc/soc:pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:02:00.0'
wireless.radio1.country='CA'
wireless.radio1.distance='300'
wireless.radio1.txpower='30'
wireless.radio1.htmode='HT20'
wireless.radio1.channel='auto'
wireless.radio1.legacy_rates='1'
wireless.default_radio1=wifi-iface
wireless.default_radio1.device='radio1'
wireless.default_radio1.mode='ap'
wireless.default_radio1.network='lan'
wireless.default_radio1.wmm='0'
wireless.default_radio1.key='-----'
wireless.default_radio1.ssid='TESTINGXXX'
wireless.default_radio1.encryption='none'
wireless.radio2=wifi-device
wireless.radio2.type='mac80211'
wireless.radio2.hwmode='11a'
wireless.radio2.path='platform/soc/soc:internal-regs/f10d8000.sdhci/mmc_host/mmc0/mmc0:0001/mmc0:0001:1'
wireless.radio2.htmode='VHT80'
wireless.radio2.legacy_rates='1'
wireless.radio2.channel='auto'
wireless.radio2.country='CA'
wireless.@wifi-iface[2]=wifi-iface
wireless.@wifi-iface[2].device='radio2'
wireless.@wifi-iface[2].mode='ap'
wireless.@wifi-iface[2].ssid='OpenWrt'
wireless.@wifi-iface[2].encryption='none'

I realised that changing option in LuCi was not disabling my wifi-iface for radio2 and I could still see my wifi from my phone and computer.

I went into the /etc/config/wireless and did this to it and saved it followed by a reboot

config wifi-device 'radio2'
	option type 'mac80211'
	option hwmode '11a'
	option path 'platform/soc/soc:internal-regs/f10d8000.sdhci/mmc_host/mmc0/mmc0:0001/mmc0:0001:1'
	option htmode 'VHT80'
	option legacy_rates '1'
	option channel 'auto'
	option country 'CA'
	option disabled '1'
  1. The drivers included in 18.06.2 are good enough; do not worry about updating the drivers.
  2. Disable radio2 and forget it even exists, then configure radio0 and radio1.
1 Like

Thats where Im at now, range on the 2.4ghz is still about half the archer router. I may try to factory the whole thing and start from scratch but I would have to kill my network for a little bit to long.

Maybe I screwed something else while trying to update the driver but I can't think of where to start. Is there a way to check I have all the package?

There's no way to "check", you can do a factory reset (run firstboot at cmd line) if you think you might've screwed something up. Range doesn't seem to any better or worse compared to other routers I have however the position of the antennas can do quite a bit of a difference when using 5Ghz.

The drivers seems to be pretty much in sync with master branch while the wireless network stack and hostapd isn't. It shouldn't affect your range but it can however affect overall performance. Choices regarding channel and channel width can also affect overall performance and I have a vague memory of that lower channels works quite a bit better on the WRT3200ACM (5GHz) but that might have been fixed by now.

If you want to reset only the wireless part, erase the config file and run the wifi detector.
rm /etc/config/wireless ; wifi config

...only the wireless config part...
That has no impact on the installed driver & wifi firmware.

As pixel156 has been trying to update the driver binaries, if might be better to do factory reset to ensure that correct and matching versions of the driver binaries are in place.

But yeah, this wifi config reset can be helpful later to recover from smaller wifi configuration problems.

1 Like

in my toys is also present the wrt3200acm, i can confirm that, in term of signal of coverage on 2.4 ghz the wrt is the worst device i have. on 5ghz radio i have it on dfs channels and the coverage is very good.

When I can actually do a factory I will also take the time to try the manufacturer firmware for range before going back to open WRT to see the difference.

i don't know that i never tried the wrt3200acm with stock firmare, only for upgrade to openwrt. lol
i have alot openwrt devices, and from my point of view the wrt3200 acm is not a router for large wifi coverage, but it's a mashine for vpn, for hight download/upload, for the swich etc,
offtopic : in term of range the best device i have is the zyxel 6617 ath10k, the 2,4 ghz is very powerfull. but after all the wrt 3200 still the best device i have.

Im in de sahara, getting things is not easy

edit:But I will keep it in mine for my next purchase