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Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

bugzilla.kernel.org

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Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#91

Post by jiggawatts »

dcow wrote: post #85
stefan_ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that for stations only (e.g. mobile devices most of the time), the rules are relaxed: if the station sees an AP operating on some channel, it is allowed to assume that it can operate on that channel. And of course passively scanning a channel to check for the presence of an AP is not transmitting, so no regulatory problem there. But don't worry, for 6 GHz the FCC has come up with even more insane stuff:…

Why does the FCC even care so much? What nefarious things can the average consumer possibly do that a motivated attacker can't already do? A motivated attacker who wants to change all the street lights to green will have hardware that lets them do whatever they want. The other 99.999% of people will just use their system as configured by their software vendor, legally. Why do we need hardware failsafes? Why do we nee…

The FAA raised a huge stink recently because they weren’t ready for 5G rollout and were worried that the altimeter radar would give false readings on approach to landing.

Agencies — even when in the wrong — can throw their weight around and demand that the FCC ban things.

Consumers like you and me have no real representation in government so we have no political clout and can’t throw our weight around to demand simpler legislation.

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#92

Post by oynqr »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #40
amiga-workbench wrote: post #14

I'm so relieved to find that its not just me going crazy all this time. Its gotten so bad that I've had to install a bloody MediaTek WiFi card in my ThinkPad just to make it work reliably. I remember when the 8000 series radios were the gold standard for mobile wireless, all the newer AX cards have been nothing but pain and suffering.

Ok, a weird question... is it a Mediatek MT7612U (usb dongle)? Do you get a GPS fix nearby (~0.5m) of that card (eg. on your phone next to it)? Due to some work i had ~6 of those dongles (Alfa AWUS036ACM), and all of them put out some noise in the gps range and break my gps connection the second they're plugged into the usb port (without any ifconfig up-ing them, setting a channel or connecting anywhere).

It's widely known that USB3 transfers produce crippling RF noise. Try a USB2 port.

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#93

Post by oynqr »

eptcyka wrote: post #75
wtallis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try anything that's well-supported by OpenWRT. Even if you don't need support for AP mode, using a chip+driver pair that meets that standard (i.e. has mature AP mode support from an open-source driver that works on multiple architectures) usually means the client mode is also fully-supported (though maybe not Bluetooth). For 802.11ac, that generally means Qualcomm-Atheros ath10k or Mediately mt76 devices, with the la…

Is there anything that's current and supported by OpenWRT? Whilst I love OpenWRT, it's support is more on the level of it works enough to tx/rx packets and not necessarily all of the hardware functionality is enabled and works as per the specification .

What hardware functionality do you need that OpenWRT doesn't support?

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#94

Post by wtallis »

eptcyka wrote: post #75
wtallis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try anything that's well-supported by OpenWRT. Even if you don't need support for AP mode, using a chip+driver pair that meets that standard (i.e. has mature AP mode support from an open-source driver that works on multiple architectures) usually means the client mode is also fully-supported (though maybe not Bluetooth). For 802.11ac, that generally means Qualcomm-Atheros ath10k or Mediately mt76 devices, with the la…

Is there anything that's current and supported by OpenWRT? Whilst I love OpenWRT, it's support is more on the level of it works enough to tx/rx packets and not necessarily all of the hardware functionality is enabled and works as per the specification .

"All of the hardware functionality is enabled and works as per the specification" is a pretty high bar even for proprietary drivers, especially when the hardware has just hit the market.

I think there are now a few hardware platforms capable of using the new 6GHz band channels ("WiFi 6E") on OpenWRT, but I haven't checked recently and haven't been looking to upgrade any of my hardware to support that (I'm doing just fine using 5GHz DFS channels that nobody else in my apartment building is using).

I'm not sure what hardware capabilities you think are poorly supported by OpenWRT or the open-source drivers for the known-good hardware choices from the QCA lineage or Mediatek's mt76 family. Can you provide any specifics?

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#95

Post by stametseater »

pxc wrote: post #89

Intel sometimes gets a lot of credit from desktop Linux users for having open-source drivers, but I don't get it. Their drivers are bad , at least when it comes to graphics and WiFi. Tearing problems, graphical artifacts, and connections dropping out have all been problems I've had with Intel as long as I can remember. I haven't had a laptop that came with an Atheros chipset in a while, so I don't know if the buyout…

In my experience, tearing only occurs with Intel GPUs if you're using X without a compositor. With a compositor it isn't an issue.

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#96

Post by oynqr »

favaq wrote: post #6
mydriasis wrote: post #4

I knew something was up. Goofy problems with wireless abound for a _long time_ with seemingly no solution.

"Goofy problems [...] abound for a _long time_ with seemingly no solution" is the norm in desktop Linux.

I remember trying to find a USB wifi adapter that actually has WPA3 driver support on Windows. Hell.

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#97

Post by mydriasis »

favaq wrote: post #6
mydriasis wrote: post #4

I knew something was up. Goofy problems with wireless abound for a _long time_ with seemingly no solution.

"Goofy problems [...] abound for a _long time_ with seemingly no solution" is the norm in desktop Linux.

Not really. Desktop Linux destroys every other user experience I've had without trying.

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#98

Post by jeroenhd »

stametseater wrote: post #95
pxc wrote: post #89

Intel sometimes gets a lot of credit from desktop Linux users for having open-source drivers, but I don't get it. Their drivers are bad , at least when it comes to graphics and WiFi. Tearing problems, graphical artifacts, and connections dropping out have all been problems I've had with Intel as long as I can remember. I haven't had a laptop that came with an Atheros chipset in a while, so I don't know if the buyout…

In my experience, tearing only occurs with Intel GPUs if you're using X without a compositor. With a compositor it isn't an issue.

Compositors still have issues in some setups (mine, specifically: Intel + Nvidia + mux chip).

On most Linux laptops with no dedicated GPU, Intel GPUs seem to work fine, though.

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#99

Post by csdvrx »

stefan_ wrote: post #50
csdvrx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a patch for the kernel 6 line to add back the lar_disable functionality?

This was the patch that removed it: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/f06021a18fcf8d8a1e7... But this commit message is burying the lede a bit. There are two problems here: 1) you can revert the change, but a large part of the regulatory logic lives in the firmware blob running on the chip and you can not change this. 2) the FCC doesn't look kindly upon functionality that ignores regulatory limits being availa…

> 2) the FCC doesn't look kindly upon functionality that ignores regulatory limits being available to end customers. It was already not legal for Intel to add this in the first place, and they certainly won't help you reinstate it.

Not my clown, not my circus.

If the wifi firmware thinks the regulatory area is ID (Indonesia) it's wrong anyway

> WiFi chips should probably have some fuse in them that decides what regulatory region they were made for

Yes let's block most of resale of used chip and make the problem worse by having the remaining market just be for chips for a "nice" regulatory region that has the channels you want even if it shouldn't! /s

No, the answer is to fix the sar logic so that if it gives obviously wrong results, the correct setting can be passed to the firmware.

It's up to the customer to obey the limits, and this feature wouldn't make it easy for customers to "ignore regulatory limits" but do the exact opposite: allow them to OBEY the regulatory limits while the setting clearly does the opposite for now (unless Indonesia is a subset of the US SAR settings, which I don't think it is)

If my wifi think I'm not in the US, I will tell it yes, indeed we are, and it's on me if I lie to software. Most people will not lie. Why make it harder to do the right things?

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#100

Post by jeroenhd »

miiiiiike wrote: post #53

This frustrated me for over a year. I moved to a house and wanted to give my gf a reprieve from the wires I used to run through our apartments. But, I’ve been dealing with connection drops and speeds of around 1.2 Mbps. I figured it was the walls until I setup a “slow” 2G network for an old printer and my PC was at full speed when connected to it. Figured out that it was a driver issue a few weeks ago. This is a prob…

This specific bug mostly impacts AP mode. If you can get a connection over 5+GHz at all, you're probably dealing with a different driver issue.
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