Fast WIFI on FreeBSD is becoming real.

gotnull

gotnull

Hi,

Found this video on FreeBSD YouTube channel, some of you have been waiting so long for this, it's finally happening.
Some improvements regarding WIFI speed are coming in 15.0-RELEASE, the video shows rather quickly though how to apply the boost on 14.x by recompiling the kernel (not without some warnings that issue could happen and you'll be on your own).
In the end the demo shows the WIFI speed going from ~14Mbps to ~200Mbps, not bad at all :)
From what I understand not all WIFI drivers are covered by those improvements yet, only iwl for now.
It's good to see FreeBSD evolving, thanks devs and contributors.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uic0ksaqOwE+
 
Running a ThinkPad X390 Yoga, not seeing any improvements.

Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 9560

I'm guessing my model is not included?
 
What about the 8XXX? I've got another ThinkPad with "Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 8260"

Anyone running that one?

Looks like the 8xxx are in the same boat.
 
Still waiting for my ancient

iwm0@pci0:1:0:0: class=0x028000 rev=0x81 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x3165 subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x4010
vendor = 'Intel Corporation'
device = 'Wireless 3165'
class = network


to be supported by these latest improvements.
 
cracauer@ said:
Yes, the ax200, ax201 and ax210 should run fast.

One catch I didn't mention yet is that some laptops have a BIOS lock to specific wifi chips, so you cannot swap in generic ones. Stinkpads are infamous for that.

You want to make sure that your laptop uses M.2 and not mini-PCIe.
Click to expand...
Definitely M.2. I placed my order, should be here tomorrow.
 
I'm typing from the updated laptop.

In case anyone is going to follow the same path, please remember to have the correct firmware installed _before_switching the cards, otherwise you'll end up without internet. Luckily the firmware is included in the ISO of 14.2, so it's just a couple of commands away. Also, the new interface alias has to be specified in /etc/rc.conf.

Of course, no speed benefits so far, let's wait for 14.3 to be GA for that.

Thanks everyone for your help.
 
OK, I couldn't resist and thus I upgraded to 14.3-BETA4. Now I get a steady 100Mps, a great improvement from my previous 14Mbps but still way slower than the 600Mbps I get on my iPhone. Can I do anything?
 
1748103203640.png
 
There is important context before and in between these two quoted sentences.

Please read the mailing list message(s) as linked for the full context (replies are also good to read).

Note: this discussion is on multiple mailing lists: wireless, current, stable, desktop. If you reply: cc accordingly.
 
Charlie_ said:
HEADS UP: wireless KPI and KBI and FreeBSD 15 (current)
HEADS UP: wireless KPI and KBI and FreeBSD 15 (stable)
Code: 
After some discussion we think this is not a feasible solution and we
will declare the KPI and KBI for wireless as unstable in FreeBSD 15.

Before finalizing this decision, we invite feedback from the community.
If you have concerns or objections, please speak up now.
Click to expand...
Reading the mailing lists, this should be considered a "good" thing if you want fast Wi-Fi. What it means from my understanding:
- Wi-Fi improvements with the Linux KPI and KBI right now will break other things.
- To have this resolved and pushed out as "stable" would involve work that will not be completed in time for 15-STABLE, and would have to wait until 16 to be included.
- By declaring it "unstable" the Wi-Fi improvements can be included in 15 with a "use at your own risk" warning.

For myself, whatever it seems that will break will not really be applicable for systems I will be using Wi-Fi, and for the majority of people's desired Wi-Fi use cases at that. I'm glad they aren't waiting for it to be perfectly stable. It is Wi-Fi after all, and my experience with MacOS and Windows tells me it isn't very stable on those platforms either.
 
I have an Intel AX200 in my Lenovo ThinkBook 15 G2, but I'm not seeing high wireless speeds yet. I'm currently running FreeBSD 14.3-RC1. On Speedtest, I get around 25.13 Mbps download and 34.48 Mbps upload. Am I missing something?

Code: 
$ dmesg | grep wifi
iwlwifi0: <iwlwifi> mem 0xd0500000-0xd0503fff at device 0.0 on pci3
iwlwifi0: Detected crf-id 0x3617, cnv-id 0x100530 wfpm id 0x80000000
iwlwifi0: PCI dev 2723/0084, rev=0x340, rfid=0x10a100
iwlwifi0: Detected Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-cc-a0-77.ucode'
iwlwifi0: TLV_FW_FSEQ_VERSION: FSEQ Version: 89.3.35.37
iwlwifi0: loaded firmware version 77.0b4c06ad.0 cc-a0-77.ucode op_mode iwlmvm
iwlwifi0: Detected RF HR B3, rfid=0x10a100
iwlwifi0: base HW address: 50:2f:9b:29:e2:a8

Code: 
wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    options=0
    ether 50:2f:9b:29:e2:a8
    inet 192.168.1.106 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 255.255.255.255
    groups: wlan
    ssid ************** channel 36 (5180 MHz 11a) bssid 38:6b:1c:66:57:8d
    regdomain NONE country RO authmode WPA2/802.11i privacy ON
    deftxkey UNDEF AES-CCM 2:128-bit txpower 17 bmiss 7 mcastrate 6
    mgmtrate 6 scanvalid 60 wme roaming MANUAL
    parent interface: iwlwifi0
    media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet OFDM/36Mbps mode 11a
    status: associated
    nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
 
I also read Anne Dickison's post, and I have a question: Is there some work on making AP mode functional and modern again? I had to abandon using AP mode as a real access point around the 2014 time frame, when it turned out that FreeBSD's implementation was so far behind that many modern clients broke the AP functionality. In the future, it might be interesting to be able to use a FreeBSD server also as an AP, or get FreeBSD installed in the ubiquitous old APs (many of which are running a Linux flavor).
 
zsolt said:
I have an Intel AX200 in my Lenovo ThinkBook 15 G2, but I'm not seeing high wireless speeds yet. I'm currently running FreeBSD 14.3-RC1. On Speedtest, I get around 25.13 Mbps download and 34.48 Mbps upload. Am I missing something?

Code: 
$ dmesg | grep wifi
iwlwifi0: <iwlwifi> mem 0xd0500000-0xd0503fff at device 0.0 on pci3
iwlwifi0: Detected crf-id 0x3617, cnv-id 0x100530 wfpm id 0x80000000
iwlwifi0: PCI dev 2723/0084, rev=0x340, rfid=0x10a100
iwlwifi0: Detected Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-cc-a0-77.ucode'
iwlwifi0: TLV_FW_FSEQ_VERSION: FSEQ Version: 89.3.35.37
iwlwifi0: loaded firmware version 77.0b4c06ad.0 cc-a0-77.ucode op_mode iwlmvm
iwlwifi0: Detected RF HR B3, rfid=0x10a100
iwlwifi0: base HW address: 50:2f:9b:29:e2:a8

Code: 
wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    options=0
    ether 50:2f:9b:29:e2:a8
    inet 192.168.1.106 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 255.255.255.255
    groups: wlan
    ssid ************** channel 36 (5180 MHz 11a) bssid 38:6b:1c:66:57:8d
    regdomain NONE country RO authmode WPA2/802.11i privacy ON
    deftxkey UNDEF AES-CCM 2:128-bit txpower 17 bmiss 7 mcastrate 6
    mgmtrate 6 scanvalid 60 wme roaming MANUAL
    parent interface: iwlwifi0
    media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet OFDM/36Mbps mode 11a
    status: associated
    nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
Click to expand...
Try running at 2.4GHz instead of 5GHz.
 
Charlie_ said:
HEADS UP: wireless KPI and KBI and FreeBSD 15 (current)
HEADS UP: wireless KPI and KBI and FreeBSD 15 (stable)
Code: 
After some discussion we think this is not a feasible solution and we
will declare the KPI and KBI for wireless as unstable in FreeBSD 15.

Before finalizing this decision, we invite feedback from the community.
If you have concerns or objections, please speak up now.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the notice.
Indeed stability is a must, after all 2027 is not that far away.
 
I'm getting the same snail speed 16Mbps
iwm0@pci0:2:0:0: class=0x028000 rev=0x73 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x08b1 subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x4060
vendor = 'Intel Corporation'
device = 'Wireless 7260'
class = network
 
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