It's been a while

[Thimbles809]

(In case you all needed a refresher:
#200)

And I got a new present:
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CVVWNSH2
It's a mt7921 and it comes with a usb drive with drivers and the adapter with two antennas.

So in order to celebrate, I upgraded one of my razzy AP's from bullseye to bookworm.
And it collapsed. :O
So I reinstalled everything from scratch. Turns out the Labist power supply from the original kit DID NOT like bookworm and, when trying to power the pi and the hostapd adapters, it said NAH! and keeled over. Had a genuine power supply lying around, so I plugged that in.
Then I went over the guide, from scratch, to get everything set up with my dhcp, dynamic dns router.

And it turns out there've been a few changes and a few improvements.

1. the ethernet port has been renamed to end0. The ethernet port also gets an ip address from the network manager when you aren't looking. This lead to a weird situation where my laptop could connect to the AP, but could not ssh or ping to the AP. However I could access the net and ssh to my router and, from the router, ssh to my AP. :?
   Solution?
   In /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
   I added the ethernet port to your tutorial.
   unmanaged-devices=interface-name:wlx11111111;interface-name:end0

[Thimbles809]

2. when creating a bridge with a DHCP assigned address, you still need to create your unique MACAddress that will be assigned to the pool of adapters under the bridge.
   I made a file 30-config-bridge-br0.network:
   And put:
   [Link] MACAddress=da:1f:7c:a0:98:1e [Network] DHCP=ipv4 IPv6AcceptRA=no LinkLocalAddressing=no
   where the MAC address is just a random generated one from any MAC address generator. The LinkLocalAddressing flags and the IPV6AcceptRA are there because the interfaces would get IPv6 addresses randomly generated by the system in the past otherwise.
   when I config the subordinate interfaces in 31-config-br0-interfaces.network, I shut down all of these since the subordinates are bound by the bridge:
   [Match] Name=wlx11111111 Name=end0 [Network] DHCP=no IPv6AcceptRA=no LinkLocalAddressing=no

[Thimbles809]

Doh, thought I had selected the [Match] Name=br0. Plus I forgot the code tag erases newlines.

[Thimbles809]

3. in the /etc/systemd/system/hostapd.service file, I did all the changes that the tutorial suggested but also added a reduce power command since I have dual ap's in two different areas of the house that don't need to shout:
   ExecStartPost=/sbin/iw dev wlx11111111 set txpower fixed 1000
   And with those minor changes on the tutorial, the AP is now dynamically configured, it's power is low, and the other system services are leaving my interfaces alone with no random ip 4 or 6 addresses assigned.
   THANK GOD.
   It also seems work has been done with systemd or the dhcpcd client so that bridges no longer fail to accept renew requests so that the syslog gets spammed.
   Which BTW doesn't exist no more because it's in journalctl. Luckily command v still works to get to the end of a 1000000 line log a page at a time.

[Thimbles809]

So anyways, to make a long story, well, long, I'm setting up my wifi 6 adapters tomorrow. I have a wifi4 and wifi5 adapter running off MT7612U chips from comfast and alfa, and they've been running off a powered VIA VL817 chip USB hub which has been rock solid for the most part.
So yeah, anything I should know before I dive into the mt7921 and wifi6e?
And raspberry pi has just come out with their own supported powered usb hub:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/usb-3-hub/
Have you tried any testing with that?

[Thimbles809]

Oh, and a ps. I'm thinking of creating a guest network that allows access to the internet, but not access to the internal network. Is this something that you can create out of a multiple logical SSID's on a single adapter or is this something you require a dedicated adapter for? And like how? I saw the AP isolate flag in hostapd.conf, but I didn't have much success with it.

[Thimbles809]

So using the wifi 6 conf file here:
https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/020e3a75128b9f9122bc0886f5124d6658bd3ffe/home/AP_Mode/hostapd-WiFi6.conf
I got my mt7921u running wifi 6 while the other mt7612's run wifi4 and 5 respectively.
wifi 4 ookla results?
Download Mbps
74.26
Upload Mbps
60.80
wifi 5?
Download Mbps
266.47
Upload Mbps
210.44
And now wifi 6?
Download Mbps
425.76
Upload Mbps
214.77
This is basically saturating the data limit of our current cable plan. So, all in all, not bad.

[Thimbles809]

So, something interesting. I use my DNS to resolve names on my network. I also use DHCP to set my network clients to receive their DNS server information.

But guess what using systemd breaks. Yeah, so systemd resolve stops resolving and suddenly my AP stops knowing how to address my router by name. The other network clients are fine, but the AP itself can mail packets, it just can't address them by name. Nor does it know the local domain.
The solution I found was in 30-config-bridge-br0.network:
[Match]
Name=br0
[Link]
MACAddress=da:1f:7c:a0:98:1e
[Network]
DHCP=ipv4
IPv6AcceptRA=no
LinkLocalAddressing=no
#here's the resolve fix
DNS=192.168.1.1
Domains=local
But yeah, would be more elegant if systemd allowed the dhcp server to configure the host of dynamic configurations? This seems to be a wide spread problem.

[Thimbles809]

Spoke to soon. Turns out from here:
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd.network.html
You can set the flags for the DHCP server to supply the interface:
[DHCPv4]
UseDNS=true
UseDomains=true

[Thimbles809]

One last thing. I was noticing the power management was off for my two mt7612 adapters but left on for the mt7921u. Because it's serving in AP mode, I thought it best if I turned off this option. It won't let you do it on the command line while it's in use, but a quick trip to the /etc/systemd/system/hostapd.service file and
ExecStartPre=/sbin/iw dev wlx11111111 set power_save off shuts it off.
The tx power command I've been using for the other two adapters has no effect on this one, but what a reach this one seems to have.
It's claiming to have 3dbm Tx while my others are set to 10dbm and it has full reach of the house, even the lead lined rooms. Now it transmits to those rooms at 70-90 mbits/sec, but that's still not bad. With the two APs running wifi6, the house is covered.
Using iperf3 from wifi client to iperf server internal to the house, the transfer rate is capping at 530mbs . The internal network wire to wire caps at 700mbs.

Given my situation there any benefit to going full alpha 6e?
PS. Sorry about the note dump. Hope some of the problem solving proves useful down the line. (Not to mention, I hope I'm doing it all right. 😅 )

[morrownr]

Hi @Thimbles809

Long time, no see.

And I got a new present:

I have one of those Edup adapters that is the same model as yours. I really like it. Well done adapter.

Given my situation there any benefit to going full alpha 6e?

If my testing is any indication, the answer is no. It seems to stem from the big drop in allowed txpwr for 6 GHz. I'm sticking with 5 GHz. There is also an issue in some countries with AP mode being available for 6 GHz.

It may take me awhile to read the rest of your messages. I am busy today.

@morrownr

[Thimbles809]

Yeah, I get the whole busy thing.
So it turns out that I've been experimenting with trying to move my canadian based wifi 6 adapter off the occupied channel 36 where it overlaps with my wifi5 adapter.
And it just doesn't like to move.
So I looked at updating the firmware like it says here:
https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/How_to_Install_Firmware_for_Mediatek_based_USB_WiFi_adapters.md
under the mt9621 section.
According to the ethtool, I had:
driver: mt7921u
version: 6.6.62+rpt-rpi-v8
firmware-version: ____010000-20230526130958
expansion-rom-version:
bus-info: 1-1.2.4:1.0
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: no
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: no
supports-priv-flags: no
So I used wget on my headless machine to get the three files. Well the adapter didn't like those files. Hostapd wouldn't start.
So I backed out my firmware changes, rebooted, and hostapd started again.
Then I went back to the firmware directory:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/mediatek
And I saw there was a bunch of 1a files, like:
BT_RAM_CODE_MT7961_1_2_hdr.bin
BT_RAM_CODE_MT7961_1a_2_hdr.bin
I downloaded those and sftp'ed them up to the access point and installed all of them 1's and 1a's alike. After a reboot:
driver: mt7921u
version: 6.6.62+rpt-rpi-v8
firmware-version: ____010000-20241106151045...
So I got that going for me.

And I also found the reference to that set power management off thing in the 6e config file:
https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/AP_Mode/hostapd-WiFi6e.conf`
# Throughput jitters on MT7922 cards. You might try to disable power management for that
# card by adding the line options mt7921e disable_aspm=Y to the file
# /etc/modprobe.d/mt7921.conf. This setting flattened out the valleys in my throughput
# graphs.

Yeah, I was trying to get 6e to work, thinking that it would allow me to stop overlapping by moving to higher spectrums, but it failed on my system and that's when I tried updating the firmware. I don't know if it's a Canada thing or a just me thing.

[Thimbles809]

" mt9621 section"
Oh hell. My eyes are crossed from firmware updates. Going to bed now.

[Thimbles809]

Ugh, so this is the beauty of having two machines to test on. Updated the firmware on the second machine with the same files on the first, but just the first 3 without the 1a's, just to see if I could repeat the problems I had earlier. And it updated fine, running the same firmware as the first.
So it really was a wget problem. 😠
Now I'm going to bed, for realsies..

[morrownr]

trying to move my canadian based wifi 6 adapter off the occupied channel 36 where it overlaps with my wifi5 adapter

Use the following command to see what the regulatory info for Canada is:

$ iw list

Check the channels in all 3 bands to see what it says. In the US, on band 2 (5 GHz) we have a lower band starting at channel 36 and an upper band starting at channel 149 and then the DFS channels in between. Let's see if you can do 149. My testing with band 4 (6 GHz) has proved to be less than inspiring. The dramatic drop in allowed txpwr means the range is dramatically less than band 5. I guess we will have to figure out how best to use band 4 as time passes.

[Thimbles809]

Gravy.
So according to the iw list these were good channels.
* 5745 MHz [149] (30.0 dBm)
* 5765 MHz [153] (30.0 dBm)
* 5785 MHz [157] (30.0 dBm)
* 5805 MHz [161] (30.0 dBm)
* 5825 MHz [165] (30.0 dBm)
but the hostapd kept failing.
Tried running it at the command line and I got some interesting spew:
nl80211: Regulatory information - country=CA (DFS-FCC)
nl80211: 2402-2472 @ 40 MHz 30 mBm
5150-5250 @ 80 MHz 23 mBm (no outdoor)
5250-5350 @ 80 MHz 24 mBm (DFS)
5470-5600 @ 80 MHz 24 mBm (DFS)
5650-5730 @ 80 MHz 24 mBm (DFS)
nl80211: 5735-5835 @ 80 MHz 30 mBm
nl80211: 5925-7125 @ 320 MHz 12 mBm (no outdoor)
But it still failed miserably. Tried setting the indoor code in case it was that.
Nope. failure. Checked my hostapd.log. Found a needle in the haystack:
Wrong coupling between HT and VHT/HE channel setting
Could not set channel for kernel driver
Interface initialization failed
Went over the HT and VHT settings and what did I find?
VHT center channel (chan + 6)
# When using band 1 (2.4 GHZ) comment out the below line
#vht_oper_centr_freq_seg0_idx=42
Oh. That's 36 + 6. We want 149 + 6.
vht_oper_centr_freq_seg0_idx=155
So that should solve our problems and... wait a minute:
For WiFi 6 on band 1 (2.4 GHz) comment out the below line
he_oper_chwidth=1
# HE center channel (chan + 2 for 40 MHz) (chan + 6 for 80 MHz)
# For WiFi 6 on band 1 (2.4 GHz) comment out the below line
#he_oper_centr_freq_seg0_idx=42
he_oper_centr_freq_seg0_idx=155

Aw jeez.
So after those changes, I got the 149 band back together. No more overlapping!
(But in all seriousness, do I have a diagnosable problem? What drives a person to repeatedly slam their head against a wall because they don't like it when their wifi frequencies overlap? I should seek treatment, which will be that much easier now that I have my access portal organized! Nice clear internet! Perfect for those zoom therapy sessions!)

[morrownr]

Checked my hostapd.log. Found a needle in the haystack: Wrong coupling between HT and VHT/HE channel setting. Could not set channel for kernel driver.

The hostapd.log can be very handy. I set the log to work while set things up but once things are stable, I turn it off to save processing power. That log is your friend.

So after those changes, I got the 149 band back together. No more overlapping!

Cool. Back in the WiFi 4 days, hostapd.conf was easy. It was not too bad in the Wifi 5 days. Now with WiFi 6, 6e and 7, it is a challenge to learn. But once we learn and improved guides are available, we can keep going.

Just check in here at USB-WiFi once in a while to see how others are pulling their hair out... it will make you feel better about yourself.

[Thimbles809]

Oh good. I could use a little 'feel better about myself'. On top of my redo of the bridged access points using systemd networkd, I also decided to refresh my router set up using the latest Raspberry OS, systemd networkd, isc-dhcp-server & bind9 (for the ddns updates), and firewalld.

It's working and it's handy not only for studying the traffic on your network between the systems, it's also handy for turning a raspberry pi into a wireless network bridge.

While I was doing the testing on my new router setup, I was sent to a consigned room with no wired access to my old wired setup (wife + xmas decor = sent to the dungeon). So on my raspberry pi 400, I used the wlan interface as my wan connection and my end0 interface as the lan connection to my laptop. That way I could test the new network assignments and the dns zone updates before I put the os into production. It allowed me to see both sides of the network (in a simple firewalld setup, you have public and home zones from which one is an ingress zone and the other is an egress zone and you manage your zone traffic with policies and... well... it's easier if you see it) from my old raspberry pi router (which was my wan access) and my wired client laptop.

I actually did a similar thing in the past at an organization with a smart tv in a room with no ethernet access. They had an enterprise network, but many 'smart devices' can't handle WPA Enterprise credentials.
But my door stop, cobwebbed draped, raspberry pi 2 can! It had an old canakit usb wifi adapter which could be used as the wan, and an ethernet port that was used for the lan which plugged into the back of the tv. Instant enterprise wifi network card. Youtube all the live long day.

Anyways, I digress. If you need any tips on a project like that, I got mine working. So it's possible.

Speaking of which, any thoughts on implementing a guest wifi on a bridged AP?