In a very noisy 2.4GHz environment (with HT/40 enabled, making it worse)
I saw the following occur:
* the air was considered "busy" a lot of the time;
* the cabq time is quite short due to staggered beacons being enabled;
* it just wasn't able to keep up TX'ing CABQ frames;
* .. and the cabq would swallow up all the TX ath_buf's.
This patch introduces a twiddle which allows the maximum cabq depth to be
set, forcing further frames to be dropped.
It defaults to the TX buffer count at the moment, so the default behaviour
isn't changed.
I've also started fleshing out a similar setup for the data path, so
it doesn't swallow up all the available TX buffers and preventing management
frames (such as ADDBA) out.
PR: kern/165895
frames with stations in power saving mode.
I'm not (yet) sure how to handle TX'ing aggregates frames to stations
that are in power saving mode, or whether that's even a feasible thing
to do. So in order to (mostly) not forget, leave a couple of comments
in the code.
The code presently assumes that the aggregation TID state for an ath_node
is locked not by the ath_node lock or a node+TID lock, but behind the
hardware queue said TID maps to. This assumption is going to be
incorrect for stations in power saving mode as we'll be TX'ing frames
on the multicast queue.
In any case, I'm afraid its a "later problem". :/
the last buffer in the list.
The current behaviour (due to me, so pointy hat is firmly on my head here)
was incorrect - it was setting the link pointer to the last descriptor
of the _first_ buffer in the TXQ. Instead, it should have set it to the
last descriptor in the _last_ buffer in the TXQ.
This showed up as occasional TX stalls with frames in the TXQ but no
TX progress being made. Further inspection showed the TXQ looked like
it contained multiple "lists" of frames - there'd be a list of correct
frames, then a NULL link pointer, but there'd be a next buffer in the
list.
Since this code is only called upon an interface reset, it's likely
this only began showing up when I started doing stress testing
in environments which annoy the radios enough to cause lockups.
I've not yet any TX stalls with this patch applied.
PR: kern/165866
This shows that the majority of the weird traffic I see here are probe
frames that haven't been sent out, but I can also trigger this condition
by doing ICMP w/ -i 0.3 - enough to trigger the TX during actual scanning,
but not fast enough to stop scanning from occuring.
PR: kern/163689
* Failall is now named just that.
* Add TX ok and TX fail, for aggregate frame sub-frames.
This will break athstats; a followup commit wil resolve this.
Sponsored by: Hobnob, Inc.
for the ath(4) driver.
Currently, there's nothing stopping reset, channel change and general
TX/RX from overlapping with each other. This wasn't a big deal with
pre-11n traffic as it just results in some dropped frames.
It's possible this may have also caused some inconsistencies and
badly-setup hardware.
Since locks can't be held across all of this (the Linux solution)
due to LORs with the network stack locks, some state counter
variables are used to track what parts of the code the driver is
currently in.
When the hardware is being reset, it disables the taskqueue and
waits for pending interrupts, tx, rx and tx completion before
it begins the reset or channel change.
TX and RX both abort if called during an active reset or channel
change.
Finally, the reset path now doesn't flush frames if ATH_RESET_NOLOSS
is set. Instead, completed TX and RX frames are passed back up to
net80211 before the reset occurs.
This is not without problems:
* Raw frame xmit are just dropped, rather than placed on a queue.
The net80211 stack should be the one which queues these frames
rather than the driver.
* It's all very messy. It'd be better if these hardware operations
were serialised on some kind of work queue, rather than hoping
they can be run in parallel.
* The taskqueue block/unblock may occur in parallel with the
newstate() function - which shuts down the taskqueue and restarts
it once the new state is known. It's likely these operations should
be refcounted so the taskqueue is restored once no other areas
in the code wish to suspend operations.
* .. interrupt disable/enable should likely be refcounted as well.
With this work, the driver does not drop frames during stuck beacon
or fatal errors and thus 11n traffic continues to run correctly.
Default and full resets however do still drop frames and it's possible
this may occur, causing traffic loss and session stalls.
Sponsored by: Hobnob, Inc.
it's cloned and that clone is retransmitted. This means that the
ath_buf pointer squirreled away on the baw window array is suddenly
wrong and was causing all kinds of console output.
This updates the pointer in that particular BAW slot to the new
ath_buf after ensuring that:
* the new and old buffers have the same seqno;
* the current slot pointer matches the old buffer pointer.
This quietens the debugging output (again), restoring said debugging
to only signify when a broken condition has occured.
Sponsored by: Hobnob, Inc.
for Atheros AR5416 and later wireless devices.
This is a very large commit - the complete history can be
found in the user/adrian/if_ath_tx branch.
Legacy (ie, pre-AR5416) devices also use the per-software
TXQ support and (in theory) can support non-aggregation
ADDBA sessions. However, the net80211 stack doesn't currently
support this.
In summary:
TX path:
* queued frames normally go onto a per-TID, per-node queue
* some special frames (eg ADDBA control frames) are thrown
directly onto the relevant hardware queue so they can
go out before any software queued frames are queued.
* Add methods to create, suspend, resume and tear down an
aggregation session.
* Add in software retransmission of both normal and aggregate
frames.
* Add in completion handling of aggregate frames, including
parsing the block ack bitmap provided by the hardware.
* Write an aggregation function which can assemble frames into
an aggregate based on the selected rate control and channel
configuration.
* The per-TID queues are locked based on their target hardware
TX queue. This matches what ath9k/atheros does, and thus
simplified porting over some of the aggregation logic.
* When doing TX aggregation, stick the sequence number allocation
in the TX path rather than net80211 TX path, and protect it
by the TXQ lock.
Rate control:
* Delay rate control selection until the frame is about to
be queued to the hardware, so retried frames can have their
rate control choices changed. Frames with a static rate
control selection have that applied before each TX, just
to simplify the TX path (ie, not have "static" and "dynamic"
rate control special cased.)
* Teach ath_rate_sample about aggregates - both completion and
errors.
* Add an EWMA for tracking what the current "good" MCS rate is
based on failure rates.
Misc:
* Introduce a bunch of dirty hacks and workarounds so TID mapping
and net80211 frame inspection can be kept out of the net80211
layer. Because of the way this code works (and it's from Atheros
and Linux ath9k), there is a consistent, 1:1 mapping between
TID and AC. So we need to ensure that frames going to a specific
TID will _always_ end up on the right AC, and vice versa, or the
completion/locking will simply get very confused. I plan on
addressing this mess in the future.
Known issues:
* There is no BAR frame transmission just yet. A whole lot of
tidying up needs to occur before BAR frame TX can occur in the
"correct" place - ie, once the TID TX queue has been drained.
* Interface reset/purge/etc results in frames in the TX and RX
queues being removed. This creates holes in the sequence numbers
being assigned and the TX/RX AMPDU code (on either side) just
hangs.
* There's no filtered frame support at the present moment, so
stations going into power saving mode will simply have a number
of frames dropped - likely resulting in a traffic "hang".
* Raw frame TX is going to just not function with 11n aggregation.
Likely this needs to be modified to always override the sequence
number if the frame is going into an aggregation session.
However, general raw frame injection currently doesn't work in
general in net80211, so let's just ignore this for now until
this is sorted out.
* HT protection is just not implemented and won't be until the above
is sorted out. In addition, the AR5416 has issues RTS protecting
large aggregates (anything >8k), so the work around needs to be
ported and tested. Thus, this will be put on hold until the above
work is complete.
* The rate control module 'sample' is the only currently supported
module; onoe/amrr haven't been tested and have likely bit rotted
a little. I'll follow up with some commits to make them work again
for non-11n rates, but they won't be updated to handle 11n and
aggregation. If someone wishes to do so then they're welcome to
send along patches.
* .. and "sample" doesn't really do a good job of 11n TX. Specifically,
the metrics used (packet TX time and failure/success rates) isn't as
useful for 11n. It's likely that it should be extended to take into
account the aggregate throughput possible and then choose a rate
which maximises that. Ie, it may be acceptable for a higher MCS rate
with a higher failure to be used if it gives a more acceptable
throughput/latency then a lower MCS rate @ a lower error rate.
Again, patches will be gratefully accepted.
Because of this, ATH_ENABLE_11N is still not enabled by default.
Sponsored by: Hobnob, Inc.
Obtained from: Linux, Atheros
descriptor, rather than using the maths involving bf_desc[bf_nseg - 1].
When doing TX aggregation, the status will be updated in the -final-
descriptor of the -final- subframe in an aggregate. Thus bf_lastds
may point to the last descriptor in a completely different ath_buf.
Sponsored by: Hobnob, Inc.
A bunch of the 11n TX aggregation logic wants to traverse lists of buffers
in various ways. In order to provide O(1) behaviour in this instance,
use TAILQs.
This does blow out the memory footprint and CPU cycles slightly for some
of these operations. I may convert some of these back to STAILQs once
the rest of the software transmit queue handling has been stabilised.
Sponsored by: Hobnob, Inc.
I'll clear how it's supposed to work with Bernhard and then look
at enabling this in the correct situations.
But this -does- enable HT RTS protection (using the appropriate legacy
rates) if this bit of code is enabled.
* Turn ath_tx_calc_ctsduration() into a function that
returns the ctsduration, or -1 for HT rates;
* add a printf() to ath_tx_calc_ctsduration() which will be
very loud if somehow that function is called with an MCS
rate;
* Add ath_tx_get_rtscts_rate() which returns the RTS/CTS
rate to use for the given data rate, incl. the short
preamble flag;
* Only call ath_tx_calc_ctsduration() for non-11n chipsets;
11n chipsets don't require the rtscts duration to be
calculated.
correctly:
* pass in whether to allow the hardware to override the duration field
in the main data frame (durupdate_en) - PS_POLL frames in particular
don't have the duration bit overriden;
* there's no rts/cts duration here; that's done elsehwere
This isn't strictly required to TX (at least non-agg and non-HT40,
non-short-GI) frames; but as it needs to be done anyway, just get
it done.
Linux ath9k uses the rate scenario style path for -all- packets,
legacy or otherwise. This code does much the same.
Beacon TX still uses the legacy, non-rate-scenario TX descriptor
setup. Ath9k also does this.
This 11n rate scenario path is only called for chips in the AR5416
HAL; legacy chips use the previous interface for TX'ing.
function; which will be later used by the TX path to determine
whether to use the extended features or not.
* Break out the descriptor chaining logic into a separate function;
again so it can be switched out later on for the 11n version when
needed.
* Refactor out the encryption-swizzling code that's common in the
raw and normal TX path.
There's two reasons for this:
* the raw and non-raw TX path shares a lot of duplicate code which should be
refactored;
* the 11n-ready chip TX path needs a little reworking.
