Monday, May 2, 2011

FreeBSD-HEAD on the PB92 + AR9280

Here's FreeBSD-HEAD up on the Atheros PB92 reference board (AR7242), complete with an AR9280 mini-PCIe NIC.

I'm still only getting around 70mbit in HT/40 mode TCP tests and 90mbit in HT/40 UDP mode; but it's only (currently) connected at 100mbit ethernet. I'll tinker some more with gigabit-connected stuff soon. I hope the UDP throughput maxes out above 100mbit.

It's a far cry from where it should be throughput-wise, but it's getting there.

Another developer has -HEAD + a small patch working on the Ubiquiti Rocket M5 (AR7240 + AR9280 on-board), which is also great progress.


# dmesg | grep ath

ath0: at device 0.0 on pci0
ath0: [HT] enabling HT modes
ath0: [HT] 2 RX streams; 2 TX streams
ath0: AR9280 mac 128.2 RF5133 phy 13.0
# uname -a
FreeBSD TEST_AP 9.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 9.0-CURRENT #19 r220911:221321M: Mon May 2 22:46:32 WST 2011 adria
n@pcbsd-3114:/data/freebsd/mips/head/obj/mipseb/mips.mipseb/data/freebsd/mips/head/src/sys/PB92 mips
# ifconfig wlan0 list sta
ADDR AID CHAN RATE RSSI IDLE TXSEQ RXSEQ CAPS FLAG
00:15:6d:84:05:52 1 157 240M 15.5 120 27094 58288 EP AQHTR HTCAP WPA WME
8c:7b:9d:d6:65:ba 2 157 270M 21.5 0 56040 64688 EP AQHTRS RSN HTCAP WME
#

6 comments:

  1. Hey Adrian, Are you getting anywhere with the ath AR9287 ?
    My new laptop has this chipset, tried adding the device-id as a AR9285.. but no luck there. Your mail in freebsd-current kinda confirms this :(
    Did anyone *sign-up* for getting their hands dirty on this ? If at all possible i would like to give it a try.
    Dont like running around with cables attached..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi,

    No-one's signed up yet to help port the code over.

    The AR9287 is a completely different radio to the AR9285. It needs different calibration, different register initialization values and some fiddling with the clock speed so it runs at a higher frequency.

    I can give you some pointers on what to look at, along with the partial port I've done so far. Just subscribe to freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org and ask nicely. :)

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  3. I've just done the heavy lifting and brought up AR9287 support in -HEAD. Please join the freebsd-wireless mailing list and help me get it tested. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks. i will subscribe to the list 'nicely' right away :)

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  5. Hi Adrian :)
    Maybe the developer that did the patch of rocketm5 may publish the code?
    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  6. We'll get it into FreeBSD soon enough :)

    ReplyDelete