ath5k, madwifi, adhoc, and ahdemo on SECN 2.0

[Steve Song]

Hi all,

We were expecting to have already put out a solid SECN 2.0 beta release but have run into some interesting issues in compatibility between Mesh Potatoes running the madwifi driver and and TP-Link devices running ath5k wireless driver.

As you may know, ath5k doesn't support ahdemo mode which hides the IBSS beacons.  We like ahdemo because it hides the mesh SSID and reduces traffic on the mesh.  Yet, ahdemo is not optimal in other ways because it doesn't announce itself to other WiFi devices which doesn't allow them to coordinate channel use.  Until now we have found ahdemo to be the lesser of two evils.

However, in testing the SECN 2.0 MP firmware based on OpenWRT Attitude Advanced, we have found that TP-Link devices running in ad-hoc mode do not seamlessly integrate with MPs in ahdemo mode.  The mesh establishes itself and operates without a problem but throughput through the mesh is significantly lower in a mixed environment.

To address this, we switched the Mesh Potatoes into adhoc mode with the madwifi driver.  This has produced unexpected results with the MP Virtual Access Points behaving quite erratically.  Ironically, in a pure Mesh Potato network, adhoc mode works just fine.

The solution appears to be switching to the ath5k drivers on the Mesh Potato so that we can fully integrate TP-Link (and other brands) and Mesh Potatoes on the same network at full capacity.  We are in the midst of testing this and hopefully will have a beta out shortly.

If anyone has any experiences or suggestions they would like to contribute on this front, they would be gratefully received.

Regards to all... Steve

[Steve Song]

Minor correction.  Terry pointed out that the TP-link devices use the ath9k drivers, same open source family but for newer hardware.  Same story applies though.

Cheers... Steve

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Steve Song

+1 902 529 0046

http://villagetelco.org