IBSS support in ath10k - our test results and questions

[Ben Greear]

I was missing the CONFIG_IBSS_RSN...it does not seem to be documented in
the defconfig for supplicant, so I didn't know to add it.

I am going to try RSN again shortly.

Also, I tried using my latest 4.0 kernel tree and I am seeing block-acks apparently
work correctly when using IBSS between two of my ath10k systems on channel 36.
No significant changes to my firmware from what I last uploaded to the beta
directory...

Throughput is still a miserable 13Mbps or so when sending UDP/ipv5 between them,
but a sniff shows the rate reported as 450Mbps for at least many of the data
frames (I guess I am still missing patches to enable VHT IBSS currently).

My tree is here.  It is basically a forward ported and cleaned up version
of my 3.19 tree, with a few additional patches.  I plan to skip 3.19
and focus on 4.0 for our own purposes, so my 3.19 tree is basically EOL at
this point:

git clone git://dmz2.candelatech.com/linux-4.0.dev.y

Thanks,
Ben


On 03/23/2015 04:24 AM, Sven Eckelmann wrote:
> On Thursday 19 March 2015 14:40:42 Ben Greear wrote:
>> In case you have a public kernel tree available somewhere with all your
>> patches, that might help speed up someone's attempt to reproduce this?
> 
> I have uploaded the patchset of our test setup at
> 
>  git://dev.cloudtrax.com/ath10k-ibss-test.git
>  https://dev.cloudtrax.com/git/ath10k-ibss-test.git
> 
> As Simon already said, it is not a kernel tree but patches on top of compat-
> wireless from OpenWrt r44654. If you want to import something into an actual 
> tree then please create patches and replace the CPTCFG_* strings with 
> CONFIG_*.
> 
> Here a small explanation of the branches:
> 
>  * openwrt_44654: initial import of the source + patches of mac80211
>    (compat-wireless) package from OpenWrt r44654
>  * ath3.19: patches of ath10k which were between the compat-wireless version
>    and Linux 3.19
>  * candelatech-lf-lf-5.3.1 patches taken from Candelatech's 3.19 tree (minus
>    some patches which weren't related to the wireless stuff)
>  * master: the patches which were used for the IBSS test with Ben Greear's
>    firmware. Most came from Janusz Dziedzic. The rest are just a few small
>    changes to fix builds, workarounds to fix loading of the firmware and some
>    required patches for Janusz Dziedzic's IBSS stuff.
>  * fw-999.999-ibss patch to allow loading of the original firmware with most
>    of Ben Greear's patches. Was used to verify that the original 999.x
>    firmware worked fine with block ack sessions + aggregation
> 
> The only patches not included here are some test patches which weren't part of 
> the actual "performance" tests. This includes patches used for debugging and 
> tests to check the IBSS RSN stuff over ath10k (which failed - most likely due 
> to some firmware "features" regarding encryption which resulted in non-
> decryptable packets).
> 
> I think you can use wpa_supplicant 2.4 for VHT. I personally used a patched 
> version of iw which hardcoded the ibss join VHT parameters. I haven't tested 
> this yet because I've done the port of the OpenWrt patches on friday evening 
> and hadn't time to test it with ath10k. But this problem doesn't require VHT 
> features and thus should be visible with the plain HT setup and no VHT 
> enabled.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 	Sven
> 
> PS: Not sure if you have finished the test with ath9k IBSS RSN + HT. I was 
> under the impression that you had problems with it. Beside the stuff I already 
> wrote in an earlier mail, the only thing which came to my mind was the 
> wpa_supplicant build setup. IBSS RSN doesn't work with a standard build and 
> you have to enable CONFIG_IBSS_RSN in the wpa_supplicant config. An example 
> config which works (with the OpenWrt build system of course) can be found at
> 
>  https://dev.openwrt.org/browser/trunk/package/network/services/hostapd/files/wpa_supplicant-full.config?rev=38852
> 
> The wpa_supplicant (runtime) config would be look like this:
> 
> ap_scan=2
> network={
>         scan_ssid=0
>         ssid="mesh"
>         key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
>         mode=1
>         fixed_freq=1
>         frequency=5180
>         mode=1
>         psk="9f0a965af38f2d0a13b66d8b46ab962c"
>         proto=RSN
>         bssid=02:CA:FE:CA:CA:40
>         # openwrt specific patch for htmode, mcast_rate
>         htmode=HT40+
>         mcast_rate=18
> }
> 


-- 
Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com