WiFi 6 (ax) adapter

Omnia hardware Omnia HW help
43

Link to current discussion on OpenWrt forum: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/802-11ax-wifi-ap-mpci-e-cards/63577

Edit: it seems those cards will not fit into TO natively

  • they have m.2 connections
  • they are ca. double width compared to standard mPCIe-cards

But it might fit, when using a mPCIe-to-m.2 adapter (because then the card is a little bit above the other slots), but then no other cards will fit into the neighbour slots… but even if that worked out, the data rates of 802.11ax (4,9GBit on 5/6GHz and 1,1GBit on 2,4GHz) can never be reached, as the mPCIe-slots of TO deliver 1GBit only, right?
What I am also curious about, is if the needed power could be satisfied…
I will try the 2,4GHz card in TO slot #3 with the above mentioned m.2-adapter, as soon as driver support is available for ath11k.

45

Is it not seems like Turris.

46

Does anyone can clue is there some rules(spatial ones,how to arrange them on case) where to drill some holes for additional antenna? Thnx.

49

@viktor: could you (or whoever else flagged @gsustek’s post) please unflagg @gsustek’s post? It is not offtopic and very valuable!

Have a look for the newest Compex Wifi-6-cards (WLE3000H series). Those will fit in normal TO mPCIe slot.

Your current command doesn’t work:

root@AP:~# lspci -vv | grep -P "[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}\.[0-9a-f]|LnkSta:"
grep: unrecognized option: P

the earlier version of your post gives the following output:

root@AP:~# lspci -vv | grep -E 'PCI bridge|LnkCap'
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Device 6820 (rev 04) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
                LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Exit Latency L0s <256ns, L1 unlimited
lspci: Unable to load libkmod resources: error -12
00:02.0 PCI bridge: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Device 6820 (rev 04) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
                LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Exit Latency L0s <256ns, L1 unlimited
00:03.0 PCI bridge: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Device 6820 (rev 04) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
                LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Exit Latency L0s <256ns, L1 unlimited
                LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Exit Latency L0s <4us, L1 <64us
                LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM not supported, Exit Latency L0s <4us, L1 <64us
                LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM not supported, Exit Latency L0s <4us, L1 <64us

Thanks a lot!
This would state that each PCIe interface ist interconnected with PCIe 2.0/2.1x1 speed = 4Gbit/s, which means in real life ~3,4GBit/s=425MBytes/s.
The last three interfaces are the phy’s, which have a SFP/1GB ethernet switching slot (WAN) and two 1GB ethernet installed.

This sheds completely new light on this situation - TO seems to be capable of hosting the fastest new WiFi-6-cards which could use in theory speeds up to 4,8Gbit/s (which is raw speed and means in reality/without overhead <4GBit), so we won’t loose speed on the PCIe part!

Drill them directly between the other holes. Until now I drilled 3 additional holes in both of my TO’s.

edit: What might be possible - the 2,5GBit/s enabled SFP-slot is connected via 2GBit PCIe which means it might deliver 2GBit/s. When searching for 2,5GBit SFP modules I found the Mikrotik S+RJ10. I will try if this can deliver 2/2,5GBit/s.
If this proves true in theory one could use up to three simultaneous data streams:
PCIe slot 0 ↔ eth0 (RJ45) @1GBit/s
PCIe slot 1 ↔ eth1 (RJ45) @1Gbit/s
PCIe slot 2 ↔ eth2 (SFP) @2GBit/s
With this a 5GHz 4x4 802.11ax card (~145 Mbytes/s) still doesn’t give a real benefit compared to 5GHz 4x4 802.11.ac card (~125 Mbytes/s). But in a rural area the 2,4GHz 4x4 802.11ax can make sense as that way 1Gbit/s can be saturated. In the end a highend setup might use one 2x2 2,4GHz N-card, one 4x4 2,4GHz ax-card and one 4x4 5GHz ac-card imho.

50

For those Wi-FI cards, there are no available open source drivers, yet. Despite that, we ordered a few pieces to see the perfomance. If I am not mistaken, there are small number of chipsets supported in ath11k. Unfortunately, there isn’t any router with 802.11ax running OpenWrt.

51

i’m more concern about power dissipation, does power supply and motherboard conduits can handle the new 11ax cards from Compex.

here is mine output of the command: 6 - 1GB LAN, one mini pcie 3.0 slot, cpu is i5-8365U with 16GB RAM and HDMI 2.0

sudo lspci -vv | grep -E 'PCI bridge|LnkCap'
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev f0) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
		LnkCap:	Port #5, Speed 8GT/s, Width x1, ASPM not supported
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9dbd (rev f0) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
		LnkCap:	Port #6, Speed 8GT/s, Width x1, ASPM not supported
00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #7 (rev f0) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
		LnkCap:	Port #7, Speed 8GT/s, Width x1, ASPM not supported
00:1c.7 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Point PCI Express Root Port #8 (rev f0) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
		LnkCap:	Port #8, Speed 8GT/s, Width x1, ASPM not supported
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #9 (rev f0) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
		LnkCap:	Port #9, Speed 8GT/s, Width x1, ASPM not supported
00:1d.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #10 (rev f0) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
		LnkCap:	Port #10, Speed 8GT/s, Width x1, ASPM not supported
00:1d.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9db5 (rev f0) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
		LnkCap:	Port #14, Speed 8GT/s, Width x1, ASPM not supported
		LnkCap:	Port #0, Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Exit Latency L0s <2us, L1 <16us
		LnkCap:	Port #0, Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Exit Latency L0s <2us, L1 <16us
		LnkCap:	Port #0, Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Exit Latency L0s <2us, L1 <16us
		LnkCap:	Port #0, Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Exit Latency L0s <2us, L1 <16us
		LnkCap:	Port #0, Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Exit Latency L0s <2us, L1 <16us
		LnkCap:	Port #0, Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Exit Latency L0s <2us, L1 <16us
		LnkCap:	Port #0, Speed 5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM not supported
52

Drill them directly between the other holes. Until now I drilled 3 additional holes in both of my TO’s.

Would you bee so kind to give me an example? a screenshot maybe! Hope that spatial arrangement is not that important. if @Pepe can confirm that.
Which exactly type of additional antenna do you buy for TO

btw. WLE3000H series are PCI 3.0 cards.

53

PCIe 3.0 interface doesn’t mean it doesn’t run on PCIe 2.0 hardware - PCIe is backwards compatible per design :slightly_smiling_face: And as I stated above there should not be any degradation speedwise.
Spatial arrangement of the holes doesn’t matter at all - have a look at your WLE1216V5-20 how closely the IPEX connectors are arranged to each other! What counts are the external antennas (to some extent), the external cabling (the longer the cable the better the isolation you will want) if any, and most important where you put your antennas (if you use external cabling) or your router respectively to circumvent architectonic problems of your flat/house! In my flat I serve two floors with my TO via RF240 isolated cabling and can recommend as external antennas Interline Horizon Mini- arranged directly as 4x4 which I cover by a plastic flour one the first or 4 single antennas respectively that are flat enough to fit behind a painting on the second floor.
If you go for antennas directly on the router just buy the same that are already connected as Turris Team chose some pretty good ones according to several tests here on the forum and those I did myself.
Anyhow - for more information just write me a pm as this gets really off topic.

54

You are unfortunately right - as of now ath11k doesn’t support the chipset. Have a look into the openwrt-forum-thread I posted somewhere above there is more information about that.

But what I’m curious about - will you this time share your findings with your community? Because last time one of your colleagues told us you ordered WLE1216v5 ones and promised feedback on how they worked but when I repeatedly asked for any information he never answered… :wink:

55

Guess my initial post was hidden due to the Amazon link. So the idea is to use cheap external Wi-fi 6 router (the one I found on Amazon is currently discounted for less than 50 Euros. In that way we still keep Omnia as the main router and benefit from auto updates & we get faster speed. That solution was not viable until recently when Wifi 6 routers have fallen in price.

56

I am sorry if this happened. If someone does not respond to you here on the forum, you could try to urge it our support department to make things clear as the forum is still a community place though. So let’s hope things will be better this time as Wi-Fi cards should estimate arrive in late November, but it could be later.

57

Would be nice if you/Turris team posted the results somewhere where us normal users could benefit from (to avoid double efforts/work - and maybe participate in necessary beta-testing). Maybe a blog or something like that. Haven’t read about your activities in a while (except for the recident device-project @cynerd started recently).

1 Like
59

Offtopic
Same here for Lte modem. Don’t expect any answer.

60

Any news regarding that new WiFi cards?

61

If I am not mistaken, then there were some delays regarding getting Wi-Fi cards from Compex. However, a few days ago, we got a few different samples in m.2 form factor from another company. We need to see if we can get the Wi-Fi card working under Linux reliably. If yes, we can add support for it in OpenWrt.

Things are getting a little bit complicated as the Christmas holidays is ahead of us.

6 Likes
62

Thank you for the update!

I’ll keep an eye on this.

63

Any news on this topic? And did you receive the Compex cards by now?

64

I still don’t have any good for you guys. We are ordering more and more samples from different manufactures.

Our kernel developers are doing as much they can to have any Wi-Fi 6 card working with our devices, but it’s a bit complicated. I can share with you that ath11k cards require 32 MSI interrupts, and we are digging into it right now! More details hopefully soon. On the other hand, ath11k is not present in OpenWrt master, yet.

But let’s focus on bring side, right? It seems that devices based on chipset Mediatek mt7915 and drivers are already present in OpenWrt, so we will see. :crossed_fingers:

3 Likes
65

I have been trying to bring up the QCN9074 (5ghz reference SKU – pn02.7) on a non-Turris board for awhile now.

No dice. I am able to get the board to power-on, have tried the ath tree on git.kernel.org… in addition to rebasing various commits from the same and the mhi tree onto a 5.10 tree. The card is detected fine, but seems to fail shortly after downloading the firmware, if it even manages to get that far.

What others have said about the PCI-e bandwidth limitations is real. This what the kernel tells me when I run the QCN9074 on mPCIe 2.0 (x1 link):
[Mon Mar 22 01:16:50 2021] pci 0000:01:00.0: 4.000 Gb/s available PCIe bandwidth, limited by
5.0 GT/s PCIe x1 link at 0000:00:13.0 (capable of 15.752 Gb/s with 8.0 GT/s PCIe x2 link)

FWIW, the QCN6391 should work fine at this point, though. Perhaps not in a OpenWRT router, but definitely upstream. I can’t verify it as I haven’t tried it.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that Compex is pushing out a QCN9074 in mPCIe form!

1 Like
66

I will definetely switch to that new compex cards H2 and H5. But for now there is no linux driver. We need to wait for ath11k.