Faster wifi with 1043nd V1
Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 6:35 am
Hello everyone
This seems to be ever-green topic here for any Atheros based router - including my 1043nd v1.
I'm playing with latest Gargoyle (kernel 3.18.75, Gargoyle version 1.10.0, Gargoyle revision ab16f958).
After big disappointment over the speed of WiFi with 'default' GUI wifi setup - I've started to experiment with direct 'vi /etc/config/wireless' and tried various 'advices' found eithet here or on LEDE or openwrt forums. However I've still been finding this just *NOT* as fast enough as it ought to be - since my net-provider gives rather rock solid 150mbps ATM and my 'best' wifi speed was usually somewhere between 30-40mbs - even with "option nosyns '1'".
Of course I've tried different channels - using channel #1 seemed to be best even thought channels > #1 can use slight more txpower (24 over 'just' 23 for #1).
Then I've started to wonder myself how 'antenna chaining' is configured - and noticed in 'iw phy phy0 info' output this:
Available Antennas: TX 0x7 RX 0x7
Configured Antennas: TX 0x7 RX 0x7
This is according to some 'dd-wrt' post wrong for 1043nd V1 - since antennas for TX are only 1+3 while RX is 1+2+3 so correct number here is supposedly: Configured Antennas: TX 0x5 RX 0x7
Doing some 'research' how to set this up on openwrt - using these 2 lines:
option txantenna '5'
option rxantenna '7'
does the trick (Note: BOTH lines must be provided, otherwise option setting for tx is ignored if rx even in it's default setting 7 is not provided)
And to my surprise now laptop can take over 70-80mbps when not to far away from router - so much much better then anything stock.
What I've not managed to use is to setup anything HT40 mode - in this mode the Windows machines seems to cannot connect ??
dd-wrt seems to provide some HT20/HT40 dual mode ??
How that can be made in openwrt/gargoyle world ??
I'm also seeing there messages in log:
[49680.530000] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x42100020 DMADBG_7=0x000084c0
[52554.240000] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x42100020 DMADBG_7=0x000286c0
[57840.580000] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x42100020 DMADBG_7=0x000084c0
Considering this is even on completely UNLOADED wifi, where there is just one sleeping Nexus7 doing nothing - it's probably some common feature of Atheros chipset - but so far it seems WiFi keeps running and not disconnecting.
Since I like bwmon info present in Gargoyle - I'm not using tha lastest LEDE yet - but since I've now figured big impact of 'txantenne' option I could probably give it a try once again to see if the kernel error message was fixed, since before the speed of any new router firmware was simply too slow compared with some oldish dd-wrt or even stock TP-Link firmware.
The primary point of this post is - user of TP-LINK 1043nd V1 need to manually configure /etc/config/wireless.
Maybe Gargoyle could provide some more GUI options for WiFi settings - that can improve speed in major way ?
(like dd-wrt has them)
This seems to be ever-green topic here for any Atheros based router - including my 1043nd v1.
I'm playing with latest Gargoyle (kernel 3.18.75, Gargoyle version 1.10.0, Gargoyle revision ab16f958).
After big disappointment over the speed of WiFi with 'default' GUI wifi setup - I've started to experiment with direct 'vi /etc/config/wireless' and tried various 'advices' found eithet here or on LEDE or openwrt forums. However I've still been finding this just *NOT* as fast enough as it ought to be - since my net-provider gives rather rock solid 150mbps ATM and my 'best' wifi speed was usually somewhere between 30-40mbs - even with "option nosyns '1'".
Of course I've tried different channels - using channel #1 seemed to be best even thought channels > #1 can use slight more txpower (24 over 'just' 23 for #1).
Then I've started to wonder myself how 'antenna chaining' is configured - and noticed in 'iw phy phy0 info' output this:
Available Antennas: TX 0x7 RX 0x7
Configured Antennas: TX 0x7 RX 0x7
This is according to some 'dd-wrt' post wrong for 1043nd V1 - since antennas for TX are only 1+3 while RX is 1+2+3 so correct number here is supposedly: Configured Antennas: TX 0x5 RX 0x7
Doing some 'research' how to set this up on openwrt - using these 2 lines:
option txantenna '5'
option rxantenna '7'
does the trick (Note: BOTH lines must be provided, otherwise option setting for tx is ignored if rx even in it's default setting 7 is not provided)
And to my surprise now laptop can take over 70-80mbps when not to far away from router - so much much better then anything stock.
What I've not managed to use is to setup anything HT40 mode - in this mode the Windows machines seems to cannot connect ??
dd-wrt seems to provide some HT20/HT40 dual mode ??
How that can be made in openwrt/gargoyle world ??
I'm also seeing there messages in log:
[49680.530000] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x42100020 DMADBG_7=0x000084c0
[52554.240000] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x42100020 DMADBG_7=0x000286c0
[57840.580000] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x42100020 DMADBG_7=0x000084c0
Considering this is even on completely UNLOADED wifi, where there is just one sleeping Nexus7 doing nothing - it's probably some common feature of Atheros chipset - but so far it seems WiFi keeps running and not disconnecting.
Since I like bwmon info present in Gargoyle - I'm not using tha lastest LEDE yet - but since I've now figured big impact of 'txantenne' option I could probably give it a try once again to see if the kernel error message was fixed, since before the speed of any new router firmware was simply too slow compared with some oldish dd-wrt or even stock TP-Link firmware.
The primary point of this post is - user of TP-LINK 1043nd V1 need to manually configure /etc/config/wireless.
Maybe Gargoyle could provide some more GUI options for WiFi settings - that can improve speed in major way ?
(like dd-wrt has them)