On Sunday, April 13th, 2025 at 8:30 PM, H. Hartzer <h...@hartzer.sh> wrote:
> Hi misc@,
>
> I recently acquired a laptop that reports an Atheros AR928X wireless
> card. While it's somewhat usable, I've had a couple of instances
> of "odd behavior," including being unable to upload files reliably
> through Firefox.
>
> This led me to test with speedtest.net, and it reported something
> like 20mbit/sec down and 0.15 mbit/sec up.
>
> I confirmed the poor upload performance with iperf on the local
> network. Seeing around 20-26 mbit/sec down (which is totally fine
> for me) and 0.15-0.5 mbit/sec up.
>
> This is a 2.4GHz-only access point, that's set for B/G/N if I'm not
> mistaken. There's not a lot of competing signals, if any.
>
> I did notice that at first I didn't have firmware, yet it worked
> the same as after running fw_update which pulled down some athn
> firmware. dmesg says nothing about ath firmware, even after rebooting
> with the firmware present. I'm not sure if it should or not.
>
> To confirm it wasn't just poor signal or another issue, I booted
> the drive up on a different laptop with iwn0. In the same location
> I see something like 10mbit/sec up and 20mbit/sec down, which is
> quite usable for me.
>
> Is this likely about as good as it gets, or is it worth investigating
> further?
>
> Thank you!
>
> -Henrich
I use athn0 as AP on a few pcengines. This is a live test.
> doas dmesg | grep athn0
athn0 at pci4 dev 0 function 0 "Atheros AR928X" rev 0x01: apic 5 int 16
athn0: AR9280 rev 2 (2T2R), ROM rev 22, address 04:f0:21:1e:59:c1
> cat /etc/hostname.athn0
media autoselect mode 11n mediaopt hostap chan 1
nwid "MYSSID" wpakey MYPASSWORD
-inet6
group wlan
up
> ifconfig
[...]
athn0: [...]
media: IEEE802.11 autoselect mode 11n hostap
[...]
[...]
Server is 192.168.1.3, where athn0 is running:
> doas iperf3 --server --bind 192.168.1.3 --port 5201
Client, connected via wifi through wlp2s0:
> iperf3 --client 192.168.1.3 --time 1 --udp
Connecting to host 192.168.1.3, port 5201
[ 5] local 192.168.1.13 port 51813 connected to 192.168.1.3 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Total Datagrams
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 129 KBytes 1.05 Mbits/sec 91
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Jitter Lost/Total
Datagrams
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 129 KBytes 1.05 Mbits/sec 0.000 ms 0/91 (0%)
sender
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 129 KBytes 1.05 Mbits/sec 0.846 ms 0/91 (0%)
receiver
> iperf3 --client 192.168.1.3 --time 1 -b 100000M --udp
Connecting to host 192.168.1.3, port 5201
[ 5] local 192.168.1.13 port 33287 connected to 192.168.1.3 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Total Datagrams
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 2.20 MBytes 18.5 Mbits/sec 1597
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Jitter Lost/Total
Datagrams
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 2.20 MBytes 18.5 Mbits/sec 0.000 ms 0/1597 (0%)
sender
[ 5] 0.00-1.01 sec 2.10 MBytes 17.5 Mbits/sec 1.052 ms 0/1523 (0%)
receiver
iperf Done.
> iperf3 --client 192.168.1.3 --time 1 -b 0
Connecting to host 192.168.1.3, port 5201
[ 5] local 192.168.1.13 port 35792 connected to 192.168.1.3 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 1.62 MBytes 13.6 Mbits/sec 0 56.6 KBytes
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 1.62 MBytes 13.6 Mbits/sec 0 sender
[ 5] 0.00-1.01 sec 1.38 MBytes 11.4 Mbits/sec receiver
There is an attic between me and the server, and the signal strength is 60%.
It is a work horse. When the chip heats up, the link goes down, however.
This is the current situation:
Access Point drivers:
acx IEEE 802.11a/b/g
ath IEEE 802.11a/b/g
athn IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n
bwfm IEEE 802.11a/ac/ax/b/g/n <--------
pgt IEEE 802.11a/b/g
ral IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n
rtw IEEE 802.11b
rum IEEE 802.11a/b/g
ural IEEE 802.11b/g
wi IEEE 802.11b
Wireless drivers in use
athn IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n
So, bwfm is the only "ax" option for a fast and modern AP, but it seems hard to
find.
