[BPI-R4] Wifi connection issues on Linux

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R4(MT7988)
1

I am running a BPI-R4 with Archlinux, and the kernel 6.11-rc and firmware from @frank-w repo. I am using hostapd 2.11 for wifi and I can see the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz networks on my PC and 2.4GHz, 5GHz, 6GHz on my phone (Google Pixel 6).

All the devices connect ok to the WiFi, but I am having some issues with the actual data transfers (on the WiFi connection, ethernet seems ok-ish). Packets seem to drop out to the point where I am having trouble even ssh-ing into the BPI. Anyone experience anything similar?

From what I am seeing here (on the forum) OpenWrt seems to work ok with respect to network conectivity. Are there any WiFi bands or hostapd config options I should avoid?

2

Unless this is a particular known issue, I’d start with changing WiFi channels and channel bandwidth and testing each setting with iPerf. I found the throughput to be wildly different on some channels even on the stock BPI image, which seems to have the most stable WiFi as for now.

3

That kernel does not have the (latest) wifi patches. It is only a testing kernel for running the board. I do not have a wifi board, and I am too busy on another project concerning the R64/R3/R4.

You may want to rebuild the kernel from a source that does have the needed wifi patches.

Check PKGBUILD here:

https://github.com/ericwoud/archlinuxarm-repo/blob/linux-bpir-git/PKGBUILD

Change branch and url to whatever branch that has the desired patches.

Then build the R4 kernel with:

TARGET=bpir4 makepkg

Unlike any other pakage for aarch64, this package can be build on a x86-64 running on archlinux.

4

Thanks @ericwoud. I do have a PKGBUILD for your repo too. Actually, what I seem to be doing is juggling between your kernel and @frank-w whenever something is not working. Will give this a try and report back.

5

Hi @ericwoud I had a look at both bpir-rolling-stable and mt7988-for-next on your repo ( https://github.com/ericwoud/linux.git), but can’t really tell which ones are the wifi patches you are refering to. Am I looking in the right place or should I be looking at a different repo altogether?

6

Is for R64/R3 only.

Is for R4, a copy of https://github.com/dangowrt/linux/tree/mt7988-for-next

So you may want to choose https://github.com/frank-w/BPI-Router-Linux/tree/6.11-rc instead of the old copy

Don’t know if you also need to add new CONFIG_XXX’s, maybe not,

7

Is anyone else experiencing this?

I have installed the latest OpenWRT snapshot(r28004-d64e1ed421) and I am still having the same issues outlined for Archlinux back in Sept: when connected to any BPI-R4 wifi (2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, 6Ghz) if I SSH to the device the connection hangs (or drops from hanging timeout) 90% of the time.

Other traffic seems ok-ish. I am not fully able to test this because without a fully working SSH I cannot deploy the device into my network.

Could I have a damaged BE-14 board? Can anyone propose some tests for this?

8

Happens to me, just switch from dropbear to openssh and it solves the issues pretty much

9

I am already using openssh unfortunately, and observing this error. This is quite interesting though. Might it be related to some faulty crypto accelerator? I remember openssh disabled support for those a few years ago.