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Topic: TP Link WR1043ND 11n gigabit router

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Changing the channel and/or distance parameters unfortunately makes no difference. An interesting new fact is, that with "hwmode 11g" the connection is stable. Obviously I can only transfer 2.6 MB/s because of 802.11g but I do not have high packet loss anymore. When I just change hwmode from 11g to 11ng (to enable 802.11n) the connection drops to <10KB/s. In Wireshark I see "TCP Dup ACK", "TCP Out-Of-Order" and so on all the time. So something seems to be wrong with 802.11n mode. Maybe some issues with the kernel modules in latest trunk, don't know.

dfroe
here is my config


config 'wifi-device' 'radio0'
        option 'type' 'mac80211'
        option 'macaddr' '00:27:19:d4:2f:10'
        option 'hwmode' '11ng'
        list 'ht_capab' 'SHORT-GI-40'
        list 'ht_capab' 'DSSS_CCK-40'
        list 'ht_capab' 'HT40-'
        option 'disabled' '0'
        option 'country' 'MT'
        option 'channel' '6'
        option 'htmode' 'HT40+'

can you try it to see if it works. i did not set distance and power. Does it make much difference? also i am using wpa1 psk as my mobile does not support wpa2.
i have no issues with wireless so if you want to try "my" settings and then change slowly smile

Hi, thanks for your answer but even using exactly your settings makes no difference.
But I noticed that another laptop is able to connect and transfer data at about 4 MB/s using 802.11n. This other laptop has a atheros 802.11n chipset. My personal laptop has a intel 5300 wifi-card.
With a linksys WRT160Nv2 (ralink) the intel card works perfect at up to fast ethernet speed over wireless.
So it looks like the intel card won't work properly with the atheros chip used in the 1043ND. :-(

dfroe wrote:

Hi, thanks for your answer but even using exactly your settings makes no difference.
But I noticed that another laptop is able to connect and transfer data at about 4 MB/s using 802.11n. This other laptop has a atheros 802.11n chipset. My personal laptop has a intel 5300 wifi-card.
With a linksys WRT160Nv2 (ralink) the intel card works perfect at up to fast ethernet speed over wireless.
So it looks like the intel card won't work properly with the atheros chip used in the 1043ND. :-(

I know you are not a newbie but do you have the very very latest drivers for your wifi card?

I am asking just in case because updating the driver solved me alot of silly issues in the past! smile

Of course I am also just a human and therefore able to make misstakes. :-)
But I just checked the intel website and the version of my drivers (13.1.1.1) is still recent.

I can associate with the ap and I can succesfully ping a wired device. Even large icmp packets (1400 bytes) work without any problems. But as soon as I initiate a first file transfer (e.g. ftp) the association remains but I cannot transmit any packets over the network, pings stop working either. Even after cancelling the ftp transfer the pings do not start working again.

I could also find some postings in the internet that intel and atheros devices do not perform very well, but I did not expect that they would perform that worse. :-)

Is it possible to connect an external 2,5" usb harddrive via usb to the TP-Link without additional powersuply?

UPDATE: i bought an externenal  usb 3,5" WD elements 1TB disk. with external power but power consumption is very low and it has a green psu.

i made some read/write i/o tests with ntfs - that where not so good. about 3 mb/s write and 10 mb/s read. i formatted the disk to ext3 and reached about 18 mb/s write and 24 read. thats realy good for this small routerbox.

root@openwrt:~# mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt/
root@openwrt:~# df -h
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root                 4.3M      4.3M         0 100% /rom
tmpfs                    14.4M      1.3M     13.2M   9% /tmp
tmpfs                   512.0K         0    512.0K   0% /dev
/dev/mtdblock3            2.4M      1.9M    448.0K  82% /overlay
mini_fo:/overlay          4.3M      4.3M         0 100% /
/dev/sda1               916.9G    624.6M    869.7G   0% /mnt
root@openwrt:~# free
              total         used         free       shared      buffers
  Mem:        29568        24208         5360            0         2540
Swap:            0            0            0
Total:        29568        24208         5360
root@openwrt:~# time dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/test.bin bs=1M count=512
512+0 records in
512+0 records out
real    0m 29.73s
user    0m 0.01s
sys     0m 13.20s
root@openwrt:~# time dd if=/mnt/test.bin of=/dev/null
1048576+0 records in
1048576+0 records out
real    0m 21.08s
user    0m 1.26s
sys     0m 8.77s
root@openwrt:~#


FTP is still 10/11 MB/s


ftp> put test.bin
local: test.bin remote: test.bin
200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV.
150 Ok to send data.
226 Transfer complete.
536870912 bytes sent in 50.68 secs (10345.3 kB/s)
ftp> get test.bin
local: test.bin remote: test.bin
200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for test.bin (536870912 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
536870912 bytes received in 45.53 secs (11515.3 kB/s)
ftp>


greetings

(Last edited by rymn on 28 May 2010, 18:42)

hi guys,

greate work. i just flashed my 1043 without any bigger problems.
Just now i want to config my wifi connect but there it is not possible to select a channel above 11.

Did i do a failure during the installation?

Can anybody help me?

EDIT:
I just see that it is only not possible to select them in in LUCI in the Adiministrative interface.
If i choice essential it is possible to select until channel 14.

But seem like there is anywhere a mistake.


Best regards Robert

(Last edited by no_Legend on 29 May 2010, 12:44)

Can nobody tell my if have done anything wrong with the channels?
Or is this normal behavier?

Best regards Robert

no_Legend wrote:

Can nobody tell my if have done anything wrong with the channels?
Or is this normal behavier?

Best regards Robert

Check what regulatory domain the router is set to. See http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developer … atory/CRDA

i update the firmware, and most not connect wifi to router

Hi fatbob,

thanks a lot i just checked it with iw reg get
and that is what i got:
country DE:
        (2400 - 2483 @ 40), (N/A, 20)
        (5150 - 5350 @ 40), (N/A, 20), NO-OUTDOOR, DFS
        (5470 - 5725 @ 40), (N/A, 26), NO-OUTDOOR, DFS

But the channels are already not to select.
is it possible to flash the router again with the openwrt image?
So i will do all steps again perhaps i have done somthing wrong during installation?


Edit:

I just flashed my router again with the image from the openwrt wiki.
Is there a newer version availibel?

Best regards Robert

(Last edited by no_Legend on 1 Jun 2010, 16:37)

no_Legend wrote:

EDIT:
I just see that it is only not possible to select them in in LUCI in the Adiministrative interface.
If i choice essential it is possible to select until channel 14.

But seem like there is anywhere a mistake.

Ok now I understand what you mean by the above: When you use the Luci web interface in 'Essentials' view you can choose channels 1-14 from drop down menu, but in 'Administrative' view only channel 1-11 can be chosen. I see exactly the same issue on my router running Backfire 10.03 (which is the latest release). It is not a problem with your installation, but should be considered a bug.

Hi Fatbob

thanks now i'm not thinking about i'm to stupid to configurate my router.

I also tried to set it by hand in the config.
But that is also not working.
Today i had seen in the dev openwrt that there was some changes for the mac80.... driver.
Perhaps we should open a ticket for this bug?
What do you think?

Best regards Robert

Throughput:  Harddisk on USB-Port === ar9132 === RTL8366RB === GbE PC

Using Samba I only reach:
3.129.171.800 Byte = write ext4-Partition => Duration 5:47min=347sec     eq 8,6MB/s
3.129.171.800 Byte = write ntfs-Partition  => Duration 25:59min=1559sec eq 1,9MB/s
3.129.171.800 Byte = read ntfs-Partition   => Duration 6:20=380sec          eq 7,8MB/s

To some this results may seam all right, but to me they are not. Don't know about you guys, but I purposely bought a device with GbE, so that I would have a theoretical maximum bandwith of 125MB/s duplex with the real threshhold being the USB2.0 througput. 40MB/s are reasonable. (3,5" 160GB SATA in USB-Casing, reaches 60MB/s on SATA).

But so far the bottleneck seems to be the CPU (400Mhz!) or samba or simply it's implementation. Maybe the code is not written in a manner that does perform well on MIPS. I don't know. However, as I am not planing to share a printer on the network, I shall try NFS. I am really expecting to exhaust the USB throughput.

BTW: a 1TB Harddisk is capable of a thoughput of ~100MB/s. Whilst USB2 has theoretical maximum of 480MBit/s, my "USB"-Casing features an eSATA Port, too. So with some SATA connectivity one would be able to realize a mighty little NAS solution. Well, in theory...

Who else is interested in getting at least the full throughput of the USB to work?

(Last edited by Orca on 2 Jun 2010, 08:17)

What is the maximum amount of RAM the wr1043nd supports?

I've read about the 64MB-mod in the wiki (kudos), but for me a plus of mere 32MB are not worth the effort and the risk of destroying the device.
Are 128MB or even 256MB possible?
(The ubiyuity routerstation pro comes with 128MB equiped and costs about € 80,- allowedly without any radio device.)

Orca wrote:

Throughput:  Harddisk on USB-Port === ar9132 === RTL8366RB === GbE PC

Using Samba I only reach:
3.129.171.800 Byte = write ext4-Partition => Duration 5:47min=347sec     eq 8,6MB/s
3.129.171.800 Byte = write ntfs-Partition  => Duration 25:59min=1559sec eq 1,9MB/s
3.129.171.800 Byte = read ntfs-Partition   => Duration 6:20=380sec          eq 7,8MB/s

To some this results may seam all right, but to me they are not. Don't know about you guys, but I purposely bought a device with GbE, so that I would have a theoretical maximum bandwith of 125MB/s duplex with the real threshhold being the USB2.0 througput. 40MB/s are reasonable. (3,5" 160GB SATA in USB-Casing, reaches 60MB/s on SATA).

But so far the bottleneck seems to be the CPU (400Mhz!) or samba or simply it's implementation. Maybe the code is not written in a manner that does perform well on MIPS. I don't know. However, as I am not planing to share a printer on the network, I shall try NFS. I am really expecting to exhaust the USB throughput.

BTW: a 1TB Harddisk is capable of a thoughput of ~100MB/s. Whilst USB2 has theoretical maximum of 480MBit/s, my "USB"-Casing features an eSATA Port, too. So with some SATA connectivity one would be able to realize a mighty little NAS solution. Well, in theory...

Who else is interested in getting at least the full throughput of the USB to work?

A friend of mine did some low level network benchmarks with iperf via lan & wan (different firewall rules), and even then, the WR1043ND could only reach about 150MBit/s. If you want a decent NAS/file server, you should use a MUCH more powerful CPU, e.g. Intel Atom.

First I want to say thanks to Shibby for his excellent firmware. I have a number of questions though.

Is there a consistent way to rebuild the firmware and the relevant packages with the shibby's patches? I have found out some of the patches plus the original config file for building the firmware on his site but I think there should be other things as well. Some history:

It seems that I have a lot of APs in my neighborhood thus it is very hard to find "relatively" quiet channels for HT40 in the usual range of 1-11. As I live in Europe I can make use of channels 12 & 13 but the firmware needs to be rebuild with: ATH_USER_REGD=y otherwise these channels cannot be selected. Then I was plagued by the sporadic disassociation problem with ath9k explained here: https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=109617. So I wanted to svn switch mac80211 and hostapd to trunk on a backfire checkout and rebuild.

When I have tried the new image everything was working as expected apart from two major problems: the imq module seems to be broken and any tc commands (e.g. from qos-scripts) just reboot the router, and the openvpn server is exhibiting the problem mentioned in this bug: https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/7159 (i.e. openvpn uses 100% of the CPU).

Using shibby's repository for kmod_ipt_imq and kmod_tun none of these problems are exhibited despite the fact that the firmware is the one described above (i.e. a custom backfire build). Is there any chance these packages (on http://openwrt.groov.pl/WR1043NDv1/back … packages/) could come from different builds of the firmware or have custom patches applied?

George.

Hi George,

thanks for your post.
It sound greate that you got the channels 12 and 13 get to work.
Can you explane me more about the process with the ATH_USER_REGD?
Did you need to compile the hole router firmware or only the firmware for the wireless adapter on the router?
And an other question where are you coming from?

Best regards Robert

just for the note (without guarantee and responsibility)

flashing back the original firmware is possible with TL-WR1043ND_V1_100427 without cutting the "header +u-boot" because it is already an upgrade version. (caution ! firmware images with a *boot* in the name, need to cut header +u-boot)

So using just e.g. mtd -e firmware write TL-WR1043ND_V1_100427.bin -r is working out of the box.

May this could be updated at the wiki

cu
tom

supertom64 wrote:

just for the note (without guarantee and responsibility)

flashing back the original firmware is possible with TL-WR1043ND_V1_100427 without cutting the "header +u-boot" because it is already an upgrade version. (caution ! firmware images with a *boot* in the name, need to cut header +u-boot)

So using just e.g. mtd -e firmware write TL-WR1043ND_V1_100427.bin -r is working out of the box.

May this could be updated at the wiki

cu
tom

What's the md5 sum of TL-WR1043ND_V1_100427.bin? I think this is the reason why I bricked my wr1043nd trying to flash an original firmware image with the header removed. The wiki was referring to an earlier version, while I used the latest one.

I think this should be mentioned in the wiki too.

@playdude

I think earlier version was including u-boot code like "wr1043nv1_en_3_9_17_up_boot(091118).bin" they have a *_boot* in their name.
vs. newer versions are "with or without" u-boot code and if they are without they are called "wr1043nv1_en_3_11_5_up(100427).bin" with only *_up* in their name.

You can control it with a hex editor.
Firmware with u-boot code beginn after 20200 with hex "01 00 00 00 54 50 2D 4C 49 4E 4B 20 54 65 63 68" which is "....TP-LINK Tech"
vs Firmware without have something else after 20200.

cu
tom

hi, may I know which and how and which firmware to flash from DD-WRT? Many thanks.

rymn wrote:

Is it possible to connect an external 2,5" usb harddrive via usb to the TP-Link without additional powersuply?

UPDATE: i bought an externenal  usb 3,5" WD elements 1TB disk. with external power but power consumption is very low and it has a green psu.

Can you say me which packets have you installed? I would like to test it too.

Mario

@no_Legend

I have started by checking out the backfire branch (svn co svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/tags/backfire_10.03), copied over shibby's config file (as .config), then changed dir to packages/mac80211 and done a switch to trunk (svn switch svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/trunk/package/mac80211). Then run "make menuconfig", gone to "kernel modules" -> Wireless Drivers, under kmod-ath checked "Force Atheros drivers to respect the user's regdomain settings". Since ath9k was build into the image I had to rebuild the whole image.

This way I got the latest patches for ath9k plus channels 12 and 13. I still get the no-association bug occasionally so it seems that more work needs to be done on the ath9k side from the developers. The bug manifests as a total disappearance of the wireless signal for the clients. All the clients get disconnected and only a "wifi up" on the router fixes the problem.

I live in Greece.

George.

supertom64 wrote:

@playdude

I think earlier version was including u-boot code like "wr1043nv1_en_3_9_17_up_boot(091118).bin" they have a *_boot* in their name.
vs. newer versions are "with or without" u-boot code and if they are without they are called "wr1043nv1_en_3_11_5_up(100427).bin" with only *_up* in their name.

You can control it with a hex editor.
Firmware with u-boot code beginn after 20200 with hex "01 00 00 00 54 50 2D 4C 49 4E 4B 20 54 65 63 68" which is "....TP-LINK Tech"
vs Firmware without have something else after 20200.

cu
tom

Yeah I think I did a dd on an original image without "boot". That makes sense. I've updated the wiki so others won't fall into the same trap. So now it's possible to go back and forth between openwrt, original, and ddwrt for those afraid of the serial and soldering.