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    AR9280 vs AR9380 and antenna

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Wireless
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    • ?
      Guest
      last edited by

      @src386:

      So I can achieve 300Mbps by connecting 2 antenna in the 0 and 1 connector on the wireless card.
      And if I add a third antenna I can achieve 450Mbps.
      Thank you.

      But then better as suggested, drilling a hole in the case and set up a third antenna to the card!
      Why playing around and doing guesswork where you are able to fix it alone?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • S
        src386
        last edited by

        Hi,
        I received my AR9380 and 2 antenna kit.
        It's working but there are two flaws :

        • I set the wireless interface in channel 100 (5GHz), I can see the SSID from my laptop, but not from my girlfriend's laptop. My guess is : her laptop is 2,4GHz only…

        • On wireless clients, download is only ~50Mbps while upload is ~200Mbps ! My guess : that wireless card is not designed to act as an access point and offers asymetric bandwith :

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • GruensFroeschliG
          GruensFroeschli
          last edited by

          How did you connect the antennas?
          At which distance did you test this?
          In what kind of an environment?
          How did you test download/upload?
          What kind of txpower do you have on both sides?
          What system are you using on your laptop?
          What card?

          RF links are always reciprocal.
          Otherwise you have found a way to break the physics and will get a nobel price ;)

          We do what we must, because we can.

          Asking questions the smart way: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

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          • S
            src386
            last edited by

            @GruensFroeschli:

            How did you connect the antennas?

            0 - 1
            @GruensFroeschli:

            At which distance did you test this?

            1m
            @GruensFroeschli:

            In what kind of an environment?

            Indoor.
            @GruensFroeschli:

            How did you test download/upload?

            Online tool.
            @GruensFroeschli:

            What kind of txpower do you have on both sides?

            There is no such option in pfsense, not for my card anyway.
            @GruensFroeschli:

            What system are you using on your laptop?

            Manjaro.
            @GruensFroeschli:

            What card?

            In the laptop ? I have to check that. But the problem is not located here.
            @GruensFroeschli:

            RF links are always reciprocal.
            Otherwise you have found a way to break the physics and will get a nobel price ;)

            I think that AR9380 is designed to be used in a laptop, where download is most important that upload. So it's probably designed that way.
            When used has an acces point, that asymetric design is visible.

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            • GruensFroeschliG
              GruensFroeschli
              last edited by

              Believe me when i say that the 9380 is definitively not made for use in a laptop.
              We make industrial access-points at our company and are using this chip.

              Don't use an online tool to test throughput.
              You need two PCs.
              One on each side of the link.
              Use iperf or similar to test throughput.
              Ideally UDP to see how the link behaves.

              The card in your laptop makes a huge difference.
              How many chains does it have?
              What are the settings on it? Does it work in HT40?
              Since you are using Linux.
              look at the output of "iw wlan0 station dump" when you are connected.
              You will get lots of information.
              similar to this:

              root@RM2-TRE1:/# iw wlan0 station dump
              Station 00:14:5a:02:30:98 (on wlan0)
                      inactive time:  6280 ms
                      rx bytes:      1330
                      rx packets:    35
                      tx bytes:      652
                      tx packets:    4
                      tx retries:    0
                      tx failed:      0
                      signal:        -72 [-72] dBm
                      signal avg:    -72 [-72] dBm
                      RSSI avg:      23  (assumed noise: -95)
                      tx bitrate:    4.5 MBit/s
                      rx bitrate:    4.5 MBit/s
                      expected throughput:    0.347Mbps
                      authorized:    yes
                      authenticated:  yes
                      preamble:      short
                      WMM/WME:        yes
                      MFP:            no
                      TDLS peer:      no

              (you might get less info, this is from a hacked driver/iw with some debug output added)
              Please ignore the tx bitrate part. It only shows what the driver would like to send, not what it actually sends.
              The interesting part is the rx bitrate.
              It show what the last frame received was.
              If you do throughput tests, look at what this is.

              1m might be too close.
              If you want to have multiple spatial streams you need enough reflections in the environment.
              When the two endpoints are too close it can be that the cards are not able to find two transfer function for the space which are different enough for two streams.
              You will see this in the rx bitrate of the iw output.
              MCS0-MCS7 are a single stream. MCS8-MCS15 are two streams. MCS16 to MCS23 are three streams.

              We do what we must, because we can.

              Asking questions the smart way: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • ?
                Guest
                last edited by

                I think that AR9380 is designed to be used in a laptop, where download is most important that upload. So it's probably designed that way.

                This AR9380 is mostly soldered on industrial leading WiFi cards for gaining really high throughput and 3 x 3 MINO
                so it could be that the power of this card would not be able to get out because of the usage in an Laptop.

                Together with a MikroTik RB800 it will be a really great working WLAN AP.

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                • S
                  src386
                  last edited by

                  No the problem is not with the online test tool. I can reproduce this anytime and when I use RJ45 or ISP' router the download is more important.
                  Unfortunately I still cannot have a 2.4G and 5G access point, so it's game over for me. I don't want to buy another card and drill holes and having millions antenna, I will have to find something else.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • ?
                    Guest
                    last edited by

                    Unfortunately I still cannot have a 2.4G and 5G access point, so it's game over for me. I don't want to buy another card and drill holes and having millions antenna, I will have to find something else.

                    It come all to your budget! If you are willing to buy on or two lazy consumer router(s) and then flashing them
                    with DD-WRT or OpenWRT, you will be only spending something around $30 - $60, but then they are VLAN
                    capable and sorted with so many features like you will never need, but even also sorted with the actual bands
                    likes a/b/c/g/n or ac. This would not be the real things to connect a router as a WLAN AP in my eyes.

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                    • S
                      src386
                      last edited by

                      That was the other option, but I'm not fond of those ARM things…

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • S
                        src386
                        last edited by

                        You may be right, I can reproduce this problem (upload more important than download) with my ISP's wifi.
                        So it seems the problem is related to my netbook. That's weird. I should try with another Linux distribution, even with Windows.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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