wpa_supplicant 2.10 (also HEAD): mt7610 USB 5 GHz AP limited to 20 MHz, but hostapd can configure 80MHz?

[Beniamino Galvani]

On Sun, Apr 16, 2023 at 06:15:00PM +0300, Leho Kraav wrote:
> I'm trying to use NetworkManager built-in hotspot functionality with ASUS AC51 USB.
> 
> This uses wpa_supplicant over DBus. While 5 GHz hotspot and bridge work great at setup level, for some reason, my transfers are capped at exactly 54 Mbps.
> 
> I've also tested hostapd: was able to configure it to 80 MHz, and get (exactly) 4x higher speeds, or ~220 Mbps.
> 
> What is going wrong for wpa_supplicant? Isn't it supposed to be able to autoconfigure the adapter to the max of its capabilities?

> From wpa_supplicant logs, I'm unclear on who's forcing `bandwidth=20` - is it NetworkManager, or wpa_supplicant's autoconfiguration?

> Why isn't it configuring for more?

Hi,

I think that to enable wider channels there must be explicit
configuration in wpa_supplicant and NetworkManager is not passing that
configuration (for example, parameters "ht40", "max_oper_chwidth",
"vht_center_freq1") because it's not clear it would work for
everybody; I mean, the hotspot functionality wouldn't be able to start
if NM sets e.g. ht40=1 and the card doesn't support it, or the
channels are wrong.

Please see this NetworkManager issue:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/-/issues/1243

One approach would be to make the channel width configurable in
NetworkManager, so that it can send the appropriate parameters to
wpa_supplicant.

Or, if there is way for NM to detect the best parameters automatically,
that would be even better; but I'm not sure if this is possible.

Any other ideas, thoughts?

Thanks,
Beniamino
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