On Sun, 12 Sep 2021, free...@walstatt-de.de wrote:
Hallo,
I observe a very negative and unpleasant development and behaviour with Intel
iwm driver
in FreeBSD recently. Using this WiFi adapter in a Lenovo E540 (technical specs
see below,
output of pciconf -lvbc), this adapter ran stable with FreeBSD 12-CURRENT some
time ago,
until I moved to 13-STABLE on that notebook.
I use a "typical" wlan0/re0/lagg0 configuration on that notebook, since I have
to switch
very often between WiFi and wired LAN. The FreeBSD 13-STABLE (most recent
incarnation) is
configured dual stack IPv4 and IPv6.
The overall observation is that the WiFi connection is, no matter what kind of
AP I used
to be connected to, that the connection is highly unstable! While ifconfig
still reports
attached IPs (both IPv4 and IPv6) on lagg0 and allegedly beeing associated via
wlan0 to
the AP, there is no connection any more and the only salvation is service netif
restart
or bringin down and up IF and all associated services. This problem gets worse,
the more
the WiFi is crowded with other stations, but even in sparsely populated WiFi
areas the
loose of connection/association is only a matter of time, sometimes the death
of the
connection comes rather quickly.
I can only report my observations. I used to use the very same notebook with
FreeBSD
CURRENT and lately with 13-STABLE with FreeBSD since I purchased it in 2014 and
used the
same wlan0/re0/lagg0 configuration I use these days, but with I never faced an
instability like the reported with 12-STABLE I face with 13-STABLE. The problem
is
present almost 1 1/2 years for now and even with newer commits to WiFi in
FreeBSD I did
not see a mitigation.
Without much more data this is hard to diagnose remotely. I'd suggest
(if you are okay with the extra logging) to enable wlandebug such as:
wlandebug_wlan0="+state +crypto +node +auth +assoc +dot1xsm +wpa"
in rc.conf. See wlandebug(8) for more information. That might give
you a hint maybe of what is going wrong.
I also realized that iwm() is limited by its FreeBSD driver to 802.11b and
802.11g,
and 11a.
although it claims to be an 802.11ac driver. Is this about to change in a
measurable
timeframe for a human lifetime?
That is underway with the iwlwifi efforts. See the posting with the
reference to the wiki earlier this month on this list:
https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-wireless/2021-September/000068.html
Fair warnings:
It's probably not quite fully ready/stable enough for your roaming
usage but if you are willing to test you are more than welcome.
I am also not aware anyone having tested iwlwifi with a 7000 series card
yet and I don't happen to have one either to do so. Could be an extra
bumpy ride.
[...]
iwm0@pci0:5:0:0: class=0x028000 rev=0x73 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086
device=0x08b2
subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x4262 vendor = 'Intel Corporation'
device = 'Wireless 7260'
From what I can see this is a very early 11n-only device so 11ac won't
help with it; but 11n would hopefully help you a bit.
--
Bjoern A. Zeeb r15:7
