AE6000 and Raspberry Pi Zero W 2

[alingerd86]

Hello,

I am trying to add 5GHz Wi-Fi AP mode capability to my RPi Zero W 2. It seems like the AE6000 could be a good choice but it looks like it may not support AP mode at the 5GHz band. Can someone confirm whether the in-kernel AE6000 drivers support AP mode at 5GHz? If the in-kernel drivers don't support 5GHz AP mode, can I install a set of drivers that will? Our development environment is buildroot.

One additional question - does anyone have a measurement of power/current consumption of the AE6000 when operating in AP mode at 5GHz?

Thanks!

[bjlockie]

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2466087

[morrownr]

Hi @alingerd86

Can someone confirm whether the in-kernel AE6000 drivers support AP mode at 5GHz?

I'll go stick an AE6000 in my Pi4B that runs hostapd just to confirm.

If the in-kernel drivers don't support 5GHz AP mode, can I install a set of drivers that will?

You would be building the same driver that is in the kernel.

does anyone have a measurement of power/current consumption of the AE6000 when operating in AP mode at 5GHz?

I can use my usb power meter and check it again if you like but on the Main Menu, if you select item 4, you will get the answer at the bottom of the AE6000 document.

Okay, my RasPi4B is using an AE6000 in AP mode, channel 36, 80 MHz channel width. This message is going through it. For what it is worth, the AE6000 does really good as far as range is concerned given that it is basically a nano adapter. My system that is the connected client is getting a signal of 52 dBm through 2 walls. Don't depend on it for whole home coverage in a large home but it does a good job for its size.

Nick

[alingerd86]

This is great news, thanks for the help!

[alingerd86]

Hi Nick,

We got the AE6000 up and running with our RPi Zero W 2 and we are able to configure it to either to the 2.4GHz channels or the 5GHz channels. Unfortunately, it looks like we're having data throughput issues no matter which channel or band we are using.

A little more about our setup: we are running low-latency video through this Wi-Fi link so it is sensitive to throughput issues, packet loss and retransmission, etc. When we use the Pi's onboard 2.4GHz Wi-Fi adapter, everything works reasonably well but we occasionally have video choppiness issues in crowded Wi-Fi environments (hence our motivation to move to the 5GHz band). But when using the AE6000 we are seeing that we have significant video choppiness issues at all times when running at either 2.4GHz or 5GHz. There seems to be a lot of bug fixes and GitHub activity surrounding the AE6000, as well as this worrying product review on Amazon from March of 2022:

"The Linksys AE6000/Mediatek MT7610U Linux in-kernel driver for the latest kernels don't work properly. There's heavy packet loss to the local gateway and randomly disconnects:

[ 282.980532] wlxc4411e32055a: associated
[ 790.489526] mt76x0u 1-1.4:1.0: rx urb failed: -71
[ 790.493767] mt76x0u 1-1.4:1.0: rx urb failed: -71
[ 790.498016] mt76x0u 1-1.4:1.0: rx urb failed: -71
[ 790.502265] mt76x0u 1-1.4:1.0: rx urb failed: -71
[ 790.632386] usb 1-1.4: USB disconnect, device number 2

I tried on multiple desktops in Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pop OS, Manjaro and Fedora. All have the same issues."

Have you seen throughput issues or packet loss with this adapter? Would appreciate any input or insight you can provide. We are running kernel version 5.10.79-v8, and vermagic for mt76x0u.ko is 5.10.63-v8+.

Thanks!
Dustin