Which Firmware to use for STA (999.x crashes...)

Fri May 1 10:30:08 PDT 2015

I will you let know if I find differences between kernels and driver
versions. So far as I said at the first message my best achievement
was with candela firmware, kernel 3.16 and backported driver 3.19.

The traffic generator uses around 30%, so I guess its sufficient !

Richard

2015-05-01 18:57 GMT+02:00 Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com>:
> On 05/01/2015 09:43 AM, richard mayers wrote:
>> I meant kernel. In the web page it says that:
>
> CT firmware should work fine with upstream kernels.  The extra benefits
> you might get from our modified kernels should be feature related and not performance
> related.  I'd be interested if you found differences in throughput using
> various kernels...
>
> My 4.0 tree is buggy in at least some configurations..I'm working on bisecting it now,
> but I would stick with our 3.17 tree for now if you are using our kernels.
>
>> To take advantage of all of the CT firmware features, please consider
>> using one of these kernels. Both kernels are rebased fairly often to
>> keep all CT patches at the top of the git changelog.
>>
>> For this measurements I am actually using old laptops. I started the
>> experiments with a board running OpenWrt, but the results were quite
>> bad. So I thought that was due to the CPU and I moved to laptops,
>> however I tried all the lenovo laptops I had at my disposition and
>> none of them were listing the network card (a lot of people had the
>> same problem with ). Finally, I found that the cards were recognized
>> in old Dell laptops, they have a dual core 1.66Ghz, Do you think is
>> that enough ?  I will also try to modify the sockets buffers.
>>
>> I read a paper were they report throughputs of 800-900 Mbit/s using
>> the same network card and running the tests in normal environments.
>
> We have seen 950Mbps on one golden Netlink AP, but cannot reliably
> reproduce that good throughput.
>
> Your CPU is probably sufficient...but you might check 'top'
> to make sure your traffic generator is not at 100% CPU.
>
> Thanks,
> Ben
>
>>
>> Thanks !
>>
>> Richard
>>
>> 2015-05-01 18:30 GMT+02:00 Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com>:
>>> On 05/01/2015 09:21 AM, richard mayers wrote:
>>>> Sorry for not providing details, I wanted to focus more in the
>>>> firmware crash. Therefore you recommend me to use the Candela
>>>> firmware. If I just want to run throughput, delay, and fairness
>>>> measurements do you think is okay not using the kernel provided by
>>>> them ?.
>>>
>>>
>>> You mean firmware not provided by them?
>>>
>>> I'd be happy to see comparisons between my CT firmware and others,
>>> but if official firmware just crashes, then I guess you cannot do
>>> that.
>>>
>>> If you can crash CT firmware, let me know...I have a chance of
>>> fixing it.  I have no chance of fixing upstream firmware, but
>>> maybe you can get some help from QCA folks.
>>>
>>> With UDP, we often see > 700Mbps throughput, but most of these
>>> types of tests we do in isolation chambers cabled up.
>>>
>>> Over-the-air is probably more like 600Mbps in a clean environment.
>>>
>>> You typically have to increase kernel socket buffers to get best
>>> throughput, and CPU on the host starts to matter at those speeds
>>> as well.
>>>
>>> Antenna matter a lot...just play around with it.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Ben
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Anyway, for the throughput I do as follows:
>>>>
>>>> Tool : Iperf. (iperf -c server_ip -b 1000M -i 1)
>>>> Protocol : UDP
>>>> Channel : Over the air, with three antennas.
>>>> AP: hostapd, channel 149, 80Mhz. With the same kernel, driver,
>>>> firmware, and NIC than the Station.
>>>> STA: I get the maximum throughput with MCS = 5/6, when I go further to
>>>> 7-9 the throughput drops dramatically to 50Mbit/s.
>>>>
>>>> I think the antennas should be separated each other 12 cm, I am wrong
>>>> ? can this have a high impact on the throughput ?
>>>>
>>>> Richard
>>>>
>>>> 2015-05-01 17:52 GMT+02:00 Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com>:
>>>>> Candela firmware should work just fine for stations.
>>>>>
>>>>> And, when reporting throughput, you should also provide details
>>>>> about how you tested (tool, protocol, over-the-air or not, AP
>>>>> involved, etc).
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Ben
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 05/01/2015 08:38 AM, richard mayers wrote:
>>>>>> Hi everyone!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I need to do some 802.11ac measurements. For that I am using the
>>>>>> Compex wle900vx.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I had a set up in which everything was working quite well, however I
>>>>>> had a maximum throughput of 380Mbits/s ( with all the debug options
>>>>>> enabled )
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In this first set up I had been using ubuntu 14.04 LTS, kernel version
>>>>>> 3.16, for the driver I used the latest stable backport (3.19) and
>>>>>> finally as a firmware the commercial firmware from Candela Tech
>>>>>> (latest version) in both the AP and STA.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> However, I read in the wiki that the latest firmware version for AP is
>>>>>> the 10.2.4.48, and the Stations should use 999.999.0.63. For this
>>>>>> second set up I changed almost everything:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> - Upgraded kernel to 4.0.1
>>>>>> - Backported drivers from the git Modinfo output -> (backported from
>>>>>> Linux (v3.2-rc1-243765-ga2ff7c6) using backports
>>>>>> backports-20150424-2-g982)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> AP : 10.2.4.48 firmware
>>>>>> STA : Following the wiki : 999.999.0.63
>>>>>>
>>>>>> During boot the firmware is loaded without any problem:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: qca988x hw2.0 (0x4100016c, 0x043202ff) fw
>>>>>> 999.999.0.636 api 2 htt 2.1 wmi 1 cal otp max_sta 16
>>>>>>
>>>>>> However when I associate with the AP, the firmware crashes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [11831.954992] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: firmware crashed! (uuid n/a)
>>>>>> [11831.955031] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: qca988x hw2.0 (0x4100016c,
>>>>>> 0x043202ff) fw 999.999.0.636 api 2 htt 2.1 wmi 1 cal otp max_sta 16
>>>>>> [11831.955039] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: debug 0 debugfs 0 tracing 0
>>>>>> dfs 0 testmode 0
>>>>>> [11831.957059] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: firmware register dump:
>>>>>> [11831.957068] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [00]: 0x4100016C 0x00000000
>>>>>> 0x009C4521 0x00000000
>>>>>> [11831.957076] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [04]: 0x009C4521 0x00060530
>>>>>> 0x00000019 0x00955A00
>>>>>> [11831.957084] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [08]: 0x00306862 0x00000000
>>>>>> 0x0040CC94 0x00000020
>>>>>> [11831.957091] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [12]: 0x00000000 0x00000000
>>>>>> 0x00958360 0x0095836B
>>>>>> [11831.957098] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [16]: 0x80991091 0x0040AD94
>>>>>> 0x0043155C 0x00000000
>>>>>> [11831.957106] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [20]: 0x0000FFFF 0x00000000
>>>>>> 0x0043155C 0x00000000
>>>>>> [11831.957114] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [24]: 0x809A0978 0x0040AD94
>>>>>> 0x00439484 0xC1A18834
>>>>>> [11831.957121] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [28]: 0x809AD1A2 0x0040ADE4
>>>>>> 0x00439484 0x0043FB1C
>>>>>> [11831.957129] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [32]: 0x809B35A3 0x0000001A
>>>>>> 0x00440A50 0x0000000E
>>>>>> [11831.957136] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [36]: 0x00000000 0x00000000
>>>>>> 0x00000000 0x00000000
>>>>>> [11831.957143] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [40]: 0x00000000 0x00000000
>>>>>> 0x00000000 0x00000094
>>>>>> [11831.957151] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [44]: 0x00439DC8 0x00000000
>>>>>> 0x00000000 0x00400000
>>>>>> [11831.957158] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [48]: 0x809AE0B4 0x0040AE04
>>>>>> 0x00400000 0x0043FB1C
>>>>>> [11831.957166] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [52]: 0x00000001 0x00000000
>>>>>> 0x00423410 0x00400000
>>>>>> [11831.957173] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: [56]: 0x809AE17E 0x0040AE44
>>>>>> 0x0040FE6C 0x0040D310
>>>>>> [11832.046908] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: failed to synchronize monitor
>>>>>> vdev 1 stop: -108
>>>>>> [11832.046915] ath10k_pci 0000:0c:00.0: failed to stop monitor vdev: -108
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  I have seen that in the past a lot of people had problems with this
>>>>>> firmware but since years have passed maybe the way of solving have
>>>>>> evolved.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Apart from that I also got the 00:03:07:12:34:56 MAC address issue.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Any ideas guys? Should I use the candelatech firmware for the stations ?
>>>>>> Richard
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> ath10k mailing list
>>>>>> ath10k at lists.infradead.org
>>>>>> http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/ath10k
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com>
>>>>> Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com>
>>> Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com>
> Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com
>