Re: 2.6.25-rc2 regression in rt61pci wireless driver

From: Chris Clayton
Date: Tue Feb 26 2008 - 14:12:59 EST


Hi,

> > I've bisected anyway and although the results are not absolutely
> > conclusive, as I neared the end of the process, I was amongst a bunch of
> > mac80211 patches. This set me on a path that resulted in me discovering
> > that with the rt61pci driver, I can freeze my wireless network connection
> > almost at will if I set mac82011's ieee80211_default_rc_algo parameter to
> > 'pid'. if the parametre is set to 'simple', the network seems to be
> > reliable. I've just let the ping application run on and ping another box
> > on my network almost 1500 times whilst repeatedly transferring a kernel
> > source tarball by ftp from another box and the network connection was
> > mantained That's with the parameter set to 'simple', if \I set it to
> > 'pid' the connection rarely survives more than 40 pings even without the
> > ftp activity.
> >
> > If I replace my wireless card with one that uses the rtl8180 driver, the
> > network connection seems to be reliable regardless of how I set the
> > parameter, although I admit that i have not tested this extensively yet.
> > I'll do that now and report later.
>

I've rerun my tests with the rtl8180 driver and found the network to be
reliable with the mac82011 module's ieee80211_default_rc_algo parameter set
to either 'simple' or 'pid'.

> I'm about to send 4 patches to this (linux-wireless) list with patches
> for rt2x00,
> most of them you already tested individually, but several people reported
> success after those patches.
>
> Hopefully it will be working for you as well. :)
>

Sorry, but that's not the case. I find the same results as without the
patches. With the parameter set to 'pid', the network connection fails very
quickly, but with it set to 'simple' I can ping and ftp files to and from my
laptop as much as I like and the connection stays up. In fact, if anything
the patches seem to have made the network even more fragile, in that it fails
almost instantly once I start some network activity ( < 10 pings).

I'm sure this is not the hardware - it works perfectly with Windows XP, with
2.6.23.14 plus the out-of-tree rt61 driver from serialmonkey, with the
in-tree driver from 2.6.24.x and with 2.6.25-rc3 with the mac82011's
ieee80211_default_rc_algo parameter set to 'simple'.

Like I say above, sorry!

Chris

> Ivo

--
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
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