Multi-link mt7925u wifi7 connection drops after 5 minutes

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1

Hi folks,

I’ve got a Netgear RBE791 router running in access point mode with MLO enabled, using current version 12.1.10.12_5.3.16. I have a Netgear A9000 USB 3.0 adapter (mt7925u driver) for my notebook to test wifi7. Unfortunately, for about the latest month, it has been dropping the connection after 5 minutes, while both NetworkManager and the router show that the 5Ghz+6Ghz connections are still active. After the 5 minutes, there is no longer any traffic from the router to the A9000. If I leave Wireshark running on the wifi adapter, it will continue to receive traffic for other devices but the traffic between the host and router is just dropped. This happens on both F44 and rawhide.

I’ve reported this on Bugzilla here(1): 2506267 – mt7925u wifi7 connection drops after 5 minutes on the access point but NM thinks still connected . I also enquired about this issue on the Netgear community forum, where I was advised that the Windows driver works without error. This is not true, as the Windows driver is only establishing a single link (2.4, 5 or 6Ghz) connection, rather than the 2 bonded links that are created under the Linux kernel drivers.

I need to get the kernel Mediatek driver maintainers to look into what is happening, but can’t get any further response on the bug report and don’t know what options I could use for the driver to control its behavior. I like the MLO, but can use a single link untili this MLO problem is found and corrected, whether in the kernel or the router.

  1. How can I get this bug escalated to the kernel driver maintains?
  2. How can I disable MLO on mt7925u load until such time as a kernel or router fix is issued so that I’m not using the wifi5 adapter in notebook?

Best regards,

Eric

  1. 2506267 – mt7925u wifi7 connection drops after 5 minutes on the access point but NM thinks still connected
2

Have you seen https://www.rtings.com/router/learn/research/wifi-7-mlo? Maybe a module option to disable minimally compliant MLO is needed until venders provide “the full set of advanced features that make MLO impactful.”

3

Thanks, George. That’s interesting to see. I noticed, though, that they used old Netgear equipment, even for the time the article was written (well, based on the publication date, anyway). My router is an Orbi RBE791, where they only tested an Orbi 370. Now to dig thru headers for iw and the wireless kernel drivers to see how to translate the output of each into the terms used by the other to understand what the router is sending out vs. what the usb adapter supports.

During the times that this was stable with 2 links, I did indeed see performance in excess of what a single 5GHz link supports.