Fresh Tomato loses advanced wireless settings after reboot

[Globestar]

Firmware: freshtomato-RT-AC68U-ARM_NG-2020.3-AIO-64K

Firmware: freshtomato-R7000-ARM_NG-2020.3-AIO-64K

Router Models: Asus Router RT-AC68U & Netgear R7000

Hello Pedro,

Thanks for all your hard work and effort on the FreshTomato project!! It is appreciated!!!

In my application, I lower the transmit power of the router to 20-30 mW (in the advanced settings of the router web page). It’s a bit of an empirical process to adjust it. [FYI: I’m only 5 metres from the router so I don’t need to blast an interfering (to others) signal.]

When I reboot the router(s) however the power jumps back up to the default (high power) value. If I look at the advanced wireless settings (on the configuration page of the router), my values have survive reboot (successfully saved in nvram). If I toggle one of the combo boxes (enable/disable/enable, i.e. no change) and click the save button the desired power values are restored. Apparently, the changed values are not being refreshed on reboot.

Yes, not the biggest issue but one that’s (thankfully) probably not difficult to fix.

Best regards,

Globestar

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[Globestar]

Update: The method described as a work-around for the behavior does not hold over time. Within a day, the router powers the transmit power level back up to full. Some of the other wireless setting (besides the power) do not seem to hold either. It’s now a full power interferer to other routers. Not a good neighbor!

[M_ars]

please explain your test-setup and how you measure the power level (hardware/software) to understand how to reproduce it

What settings at advanced wireless change after a reboot ?

[Globestar]

Hello M_ars,

[!! Ha, that’s the same planet I’m from, hee, hee… !!]

The test setup is not very sophisticated.  I probably can’t tell you the exact power output in mW but I can tell you relative values.

Firstly, the WiFi setup.  Here’s the configuration:

• In the Basic Setup page: Access Point, Auto, WPA2 personal, AES, channel 13/40, channel width 20Mhz.
• On the Wireless Advanced Configuration page, the only two parameters changed are Distance/ACK Timing = 10, Transmit power = 5 (I’ve tried many values from 5-30).

Note: The behavior is identical on both the 2.4GHz band and the 5GHz band.

The “measurement setup” consists of an Android phone running the app “WiFiAnalyzer”. (Incidentally there are several other Android apps that do the same thing.)  It’s placed in front of the router, in exactly the same place every time (about 3 meters from the router).   The app gives you a channel graph with the received signal strength in dBm. 

When the Transmit Power is set to the default value (0, the hardware default) the power level is about -20dBm.  When I set the Transmit Power=5, the level drops significantly (by 20-25db) or -45dBm on the app, as expected.  If I then leave the router untouched for a few hours or overnight, when I check the power level with the Android app it has returned to the -20dBm level.

At first, I thought that rebooting the router caused it to power up to the default values (high power) without regard to the settings on the Advanced Wireless Configuration page but the behavior seems to depend on what transmit power level I set.  This seems to be the case when the power is set to 30mW.  However, when the power is set to 5mW rebooting the router causes it to power up the default (high power) value – after which I can see the router quickly throttle it back down to -45 dBm (the desired value).  But, as I said, after a few hours the power has returned to -20dBm.

FYI: Changes from the default router settings appear to have been successfully written to nvram since they are accurately retained after reboot.

I hope this helps!!

Kindest regards, Globestar

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[M_ars]

yes, that helps - thank you.

Can/could you please change the power save options?

got to cmd line:

nvram set wl_radio_pwrsave_enable=0
nvram set wl0_radio_pwrsave_enable=0
nvram set wl1_radio_pwrsave_enable=0

nvram set wl_rxchain_pwrsave_enable=0
nvram set wl0_rxchain_pwrsave_enable=0
nvram set wl1_rxchain_pwrsave_enable=0

nvram commit

reboot the router and test/watch again

BR

[Globestar]

M_ars,

About 8 hours ago, I changed the nvram values as you specified and rebooted the routers (RT-A68N, R7000).

As of this time, the power levels seem to have stayed at the desired level (i.e. they did not return to the default high power settings on their own volition, as originally described).

Previously, by now the router would have pushed the lower power level back up to the default value (higher power).

I’ll check it tomorrow after 24 hours have passed but I suspect there will be no change in behavior (I hope).

Can you provide some insight into this behavior and what these nvram variable control? (The receive chain effects the TX power? Is it part of the QPSK adaptive power control?)

And, what is different in build 2020.3 from the prior build build 2020.2?

Thanks for the insight!!

Best regards,

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[M_ars]

Working now ?

one of the changes from 2020-2 to 2020-3 was a new wifi driver

BR

[Globestar]

Yes, the power levels seem to stay where they are set.. It’s been 2 days without a problem.

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[M_ars]

Ok, good - i think you are a good neighbor again

the fix is already in place at arm-master branch, so i think this issue can be closed.

https://bitbucket.org/pedro311/freshtomato-arm/commits/c0a374811934218a7a96446c36b1775f66f9e0df

https://bitbucket.org/pedro311/freshtomato-arm/commits/e8c42069b819868ef65a4003210d2f5c8d1f7a6e

I have no insight to the driver software and/or wlan IC/chip (no datasheet…)

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BR

[Globestar]

Thanks!!