2018-11-19 23:47:19

by Dave Taht

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [Make-wifi-fast] [PATCH v3 3/6] mac80211: Add airtime accounting and scheduling to TXQs

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 3:30 PM Simon Barber <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Nov 19, 2018, at 2:44 PM, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Dave Taht <[email protected]> writes:
>
> Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <[email protected]> writes:
>
> Felix Fietkau <[email protected]> writes:
>
> On 2018-11-14 18:40, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:
>
> This part doesn't really make much sense to me, but maybe I'm
> misunderstanding how the code works.
> Let's assume we have a driver like ath9k or mt76, which tries to keep a
>
> ….
>
>
> Well, there's going to be a BQL-like queue limit (but for airtime) on
> top, which drivers can opt-in to if the hardware has too much queueing.
>
>
> Very happy to read this - I first talked to Dave Taht about the need for Time Queue Limits more than 5 years ago!

Michal faked up a dql estimator 3 (?) years ago. it worked.

http://blog.cerowrt.org/post/dql_on_wifi_2/

As a side note, in *any* real world working mu-mimo situation at any
scale, on any equipment, does anyone have any stats on how often the
feature is actually used and useful?

My personal guess, from looking at the standard, was in home
scenarios, usage would be about... 0, and in a controlled environment
in a football stadium, quite a lot.

In a office or apartment complex, I figured interference and so forth
would make it a negative benefit due to retransmits.

I felt when that part of the standard rolled around... that mu-mimo
was an idea that should never have escaped the lab. I can be convinced
by data, that we can aim for a higher goal here. But it would be
comforting to have a measured non-lab, real-world, at real world
rates, result for it, on some platform, of it actually being useful.

> Simon
>
> _______________________________________________
> Make-wifi-fast mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast



--

Dave Täht
CTO, TekLibre, LLC
http://www.teklibre.com
Tel: 1-831-205-9740


2018-11-19 23:56:15

by Ben Greear

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [Make-wifi-fast] [PATCH v3 3/6] mac80211: Add airtime accounting and scheduling to TXQs

On 11/19/2018 03:47 PM, Dave Taht wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 3:30 PM Simon Barber <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Nov 19, 2018, at 2:44 PM, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Dave Taht <[email protected]> writes:
>>
>> Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <[email protected]> writes:
>>
>> Felix Fietkau <[email protected]> writes:
>>
>> On 2018-11-14 18:40, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:
>>
>> This part doesn't really make much sense to me, but maybe I'm
>> misunderstanding how the code works.
>> Let's assume we have a driver like ath9k or mt76, which tries to keep a
>>
>> ….
>>
>>
>> Well, there's going to be a BQL-like queue limit (but for airtime) on
>> top, which drivers can opt-in to if the hardware has too much queueing.
>>
>>
>> Very happy to read this - I first talked to Dave Taht about the need for Time Queue Limits more than 5 years ago!
>
> Michal faked up a dql estimator 3 (?) years ago. it worked.
>
> http://blog.cerowrt.org/post/dql_on_wifi_2/
>
> As a side note, in *any* real world working mu-mimo situation at any
> scale, on any equipment, does anyone have any stats on how often the
> feature is actually used and useful?
>
> My personal guess, from looking at the standard, was in home
> scenarios, usage would be about... 0, and in a controlled environment
> in a football stadium, quite a lot.
>
> In a office or apartment complex, I figured interference and so forth
> would make it a negative benefit due to retransmits.
>
> I felt when that part of the standard rolled around... that mu-mimo
> was an idea that should never have escaped the lab. I can be convinced
> by data, that we can aim for a higher goal here. But it would be
> comforting to have a measured non-lab, real-world, at real world
> rates, result for it, on some platform, of it actually being useful.

We're working on building a lab with 20 or 30 mixed 'real' devices
using various different /AC NICs (QCA wave2 on OpenWRT, Fedora, realtek USB 8812au on OpenWRT, Fedora,
and some Intel NICs in NUCs on Windows, and maybe more). I'm not actually sure if that realtek
or the NUCs can do MU-MIMO or not, but the QCA NICs will be able to. It should be at least somewhat similar
to a classroom environment or coffee shop. I'll let you know what we find
as far as how well MU-MIMO improves things or not.

At least in simple test cases (one 1x1 stations, one 2x2 station, with 4x4 MU-MIMO AP),
it works very well for increased download throughput.

In home setups, I'd guess that the DSL or Cable Modem or other uplink is the bottleneck
way more often than the wifi is, even if your are just running /n. But, maybe that is just
my experience living out at the end of a long skinny phone line all these years.

Thanks,
Ben



--
Ben Greear <[email protected]>
Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com


2018-11-20 00:13:57

by Dave Taht

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [Make-wifi-fast] [PATCH v3 3/6] mac80211: Add airtime accounting and scheduling to TXQs

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 3:56 PM Ben Greear <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On 11/19/2018 03:47 PM, Dave Taht wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 3:30 PM Simon Barber <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Nov 19, 2018, at 2:44 PM, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>
> >> Dave Taht <[email protected]> writes:
> >>
> >> Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <[email protected]> writes:
> >>
> >> Felix Fietkau <[email protected]> writes:
> >>
> >> On 2018-11-14 18:40, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:
> >>
> >> This part doesn't really make much sense to me, but maybe I'm
> >> misunderstanding how the code works.
> >> Let's assume we have a driver like ath9k or mt76, which tries to keep a
> >>
> >> ….
> >>
> >>
> >> Well, there's going to be a BQL-like queue limit (but for airtime) on
> >> top, which drivers can opt-in to if the hardware has too much queueing.
> >>
> >>
> >> Very happy to read this - I first talked to Dave Taht about the need for Time Queue Limits more than 5 years ago!
> >
> > Michal faked up a dql estimator 3 (?) years ago. it worked.
> >
> > http://blog.cerowrt.org/post/dql_on_wifi_2/
> >
> > As a side note, in *any* real world working mu-mimo situation at any
> > scale, on any equipment, does anyone have any stats on how often the
> > feature is actually used and useful?
> >
> > My personal guess, from looking at the standard, was in home
> > scenarios, usage would be about... 0, and in a controlled environment
> > in a football stadium, quite a lot.
> >
> > In a office or apartment complex, I figured interference and so forth
> > would make it a negative benefit due to retransmits.
> >
> > I felt when that part of the standard rolled around... that mu-mimo
> > was an idea that should never have escaped the lab. I can be convinced
> > by data, that we can aim for a higher goal here. But it would be
> > comforting to have a measured non-lab, real-world, at real world
> > rates, result for it, on some platform, of it actually being useful.
>
> We're working on building a lab with 20 or 30 mixed 'real' devices
> using various different /AC NICs (QCA wave2 on OpenWRT, Fedora, realtek USB 8812au on OpenWRT, Fedora,
> and some Intel NICs in NUCs on Windows, and maybe more). I'm not actually sure if that realtek
> or the NUCs can do MU-MIMO or not, but the QCA NICs will be able to. It should be at least somewhat similar
> to a classroom environment or coffee shop.

In the last 3 coffee shops I went to, I could hear over 30 APs on
competing SSIDs, running G, N, and AC,
occupying every available channel.

> I'll let you know what we find
> as far as how well MU-MIMO improves things or not.

Thank you. My lab is shut down and I'm selling off the gear, so all I
can do anymore is be grumpy.

>
> At least in simple test cases (one 1x1 stations, one 2x2 station, with 4x4 MU-MIMO AP),
> it works very well for increased download throughput.

Is that a UDP or TCP test?

My specific "most important" benchmark for wifi is web PLT with lots
of stations. That's the most common wifi use case, IMHO.
Some videoconferencing, voip, ssh, etc. One big upload, one big
download, going on somewhere, sometimes. Slashdot
for me is 78 separate ssl'd tcp flows, a dozen + dns lookups, over 2.2 seconds.

bulk downloads rarely figure in except for streaming video, and that
peaks out generally at 20Mbit/sec for most people.

So while I do like the potential in mu-mimo to, schedule lower service
times on a per station basis, I see too many
variable rates and interference in the real world, and not enough
simultaneity between schedulable stations, and a ton of acks,
for me to imagine there's much of a real-world difference from mu-mimo
in anything other than a well managed office or stadium.

People going for the max download throughput with the max number of
stations... PLT, PLT is a way better benchmark.

I can certainly be convinced by data, and I look forward to your experiments.

> In home setups, I'd guess that the DSL or Cable Modem or other uplink is the bottleneck

Offices too. Wifi - aside from interference and range issues lowering
the rate, only becomes the bottleneck at internet speeds >
40Mbits/sec.

We are certainly starting to see wifi become more of the bottleneck,
while running at rates, generally, far lower than what people bench
at.

> way more often than the wifi is, even if your are just running /n. But, maybe that is just
> my experience living out at the end of a long skinny phone line all these years.

Fiber networks and newer cable connections now crack 100mbits, and
there you do see all that nifty fq_codel-ly chocolatey goodness
kicking in....

but I do tend to think the optimization focus should be at low rates
with lots of stations for plt more than bandwidth.

> Thanks,
> Ben
>
>
>
> --
> Ben Greear <[email protected]>
> Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com
>


--

Dave Täht
CTO, TekLibre, LLC
http://www.teklibre.com
Tel: 1-831-205-9740

2018-11-20 00:20:47

by Ben Greear

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [Make-wifi-fast] [PATCH v3 3/6] mac80211: Add airtime accounting and scheduling to TXQs

On 11/19/2018 04:13 PM, Dave Taht wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 3:56 PM Ben Greear <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> On 11/19/2018 03:47 PM, Dave Taht wrote:
>>> On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 3:30 PM Simon Barber <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Nov 19, 2018, at 2:44 PM, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Dave Taht <[email protected]> writes:
>>>>
>>>> Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <[email protected]> writes:
>>>>
>>>> Felix Fietkau <[email protected]> writes:
>>>>
>>>> On 2018-11-14 18:40, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> This part doesn't really make much sense to me, but maybe I'm
>>>> misunderstanding how the code works.
>>>> Let's assume we have a driver like ath9k or mt76, which tries to keep a
>>>>
>>>> ….
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Well, there's going to be a BQL-like queue limit (but for airtime) on
>>>> top, which drivers can opt-in to if the hardware has too much queueing.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Very happy to read this - I first talked to Dave Taht about the need for Time Queue Limits more than 5 years ago!
>>>
>>> Michal faked up a dql estimator 3 (?) years ago. it worked.
>>>
>>> http://blog.cerowrt.org/post/dql_on_wifi_2/
>>>
>>> As a side note, in *any* real world working mu-mimo situation at any
>>> scale, on any equipment, does anyone have any stats on how often the
>>> feature is actually used and useful?
>>>
>>> My personal guess, from looking at the standard, was in home
>>> scenarios, usage would be about... 0, and in a controlled environment
>>> in a football stadium, quite a lot.
>>>
>>> In a office or apartment complex, I figured interference and so forth
>>> would make it a negative benefit due to retransmits.
>>>
>>> I felt when that part of the standard rolled around... that mu-mimo
>>> was an idea that should never have escaped the lab. I can be convinced
>>> by data, that we can aim for a higher goal here. But it would be
>>> comforting to have a measured non-lab, real-world, at real world
>>> rates, result for it, on some platform, of it actually being useful.
>>
>> We're working on building a lab with 20 or 30 mixed 'real' devices
>> using various different /AC NICs (QCA wave2 on OpenWRT, Fedora, realtek USB 8812au on OpenWRT, Fedora,
>> and some Intel NICs in NUCs on Windows, and maybe more). I'm not actually sure if that realtek
>> or the NUCs can do MU-MIMO or not, but the QCA NICs will be able to. It should be at least somewhat similar
>> to a classroom environment or coffee shop.
>
> In the last 3 coffee shops I went to, I could hear over 30 APs on
> competing SSIDs, running G, N, and AC,
> occupying every available channel.

I especially like when someone uses channel 3 because, I guess, they
think it is un-used :)

I'm not sure if this was a fluke or not, but at Starbucks recently I sat outside,
right next to their window, and could not scan their AP at all. Previously, I sat
inside, 3 feet away through the glass, and got great signal. I wonder what that was
all about! Maybe special tinting that blocks RF? Or just dumb luck of some sort.

Thanks,
Ben


--
Ben Greear <[email protected]>
Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com


2018-11-20 00:37:50

by Dave Taht

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [Make-wifi-fast] [PATCH v3 3/6] mac80211: Add airtime accounting and scheduling to TXQs

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 4:20 PM Ben Greear <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On 11/19/2018 04:13 PM, Dave Taht wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 3:56 PM Ben Greear <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 11/19/2018 03:47 PM, Dave Taht wrote:
> >>> On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 3:30 PM Simon Barber <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Nov 19, 2018, at 2:44 PM, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Dave Taht <[email protected]> writes:
> >>>>
> >>>> Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <[email protected]> writes:
> >>>>
> >>>> Felix Fietkau <[email protected]> writes:
> >>>>
> >>>> On 2018-11-14 18:40, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> This part doesn't really make much sense to me, but maybe I'm
> >>>> misunderstanding how the code works.
> >>>> Let's assume we have a driver like ath9k or mt76, which tries to keep a
> >>>>
> >>>> ….
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Well, there's going to be a BQL-like queue limit (but for airtime) on
> >>>> top, which drivers can opt-in to if the hardware has too much queueing.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Very happy to read this - I first talked to Dave Taht about the need for Time Queue Limits more than 5 years ago!
> >>>
> >>> Michal faked up a dql estimator 3 (?) years ago. it worked.
> >>>
> >>> http://blog.cerowrt.org/post/dql_on_wifi_2/
> >>>
> >>> As a side note, in *any* real world working mu-mimo situation at any
> >>> scale, on any equipment, does anyone have any stats on how often the
> >>> feature is actually used and useful?
> >>>
> >>> My personal guess, from looking at the standard, was in home
> >>> scenarios, usage would be about... 0, and in a controlled environment
> >>> in a football stadium, quite a lot.
> >>>
> >>> In a office or apartment complex, I figured interference and so forth
> >>> would make it a negative benefit due to retransmits.
> >>>
> >>> I felt when that part of the standard rolled around... that mu-mimo
> >>> was an idea that should never have escaped the lab. I can be convinced
> >>> by data, that we can aim for a higher goal here. But it would be
> >>> comforting to have a measured non-lab, real-world, at real world
> >>> rates, result for it, on some platform, of it actually being useful.
> >>
> >> We're working on building a lab with 20 or 30 mixed 'real' devices
> >> using various different /AC NICs (QCA wave2 on OpenWRT, Fedora, realtek USB 8812au on OpenWRT, Fedora,
> >> and some Intel NICs in NUCs on Windows, and maybe more). I'm not actually sure if that realtek
> >> or the NUCs can do MU-MIMO or not, but the QCA NICs will be able to. It should be at least somewhat similar
> >> to a classroom environment or coffee shop.
> >
> > In the last 3 coffee shops I went to, I could hear over 30 APs on
> > competing SSIDs, running G, N, and AC,
> > occupying every available channel.
>
> I especially like when someone uses channel 3 because, I guess, they
> think it is un-used :)

I think avery actually found a case where that was a benefit, in an
apartment building that had each per-apartment AP
located at exactly the same place on every floor.

I do wish I could go back in time and explain the four colour theorem
to whoever allocated the 2.4ghz wifi band, and then explain even that
was a planar rather than 3D problem.

The 3D coloring problem I visualize as the scene in Aliens 2, where
the monsters just waltz in over the ceiling panels. To me it's an
indelible image kind of superimposed over the interfering waves in the
air, full of gore, goo, and blood...

>
> I'm not sure if this was a fluke or not, but at Starbucks recently I sat outside,
> right next to their window, and could not scan their AP at all. Previously, I sat
> inside, 3 feet away through the glass, and got great signal. I wonder what that was
> all about! Maybe special tinting that blocks RF? Or just dumb luck of some sort.

Ya know, I could definitely see a market for a material like that! I'd
like it for my car, so bluetooth wouldn't escape.

anyway, just blowing off steam. :) When v4 of this rolls around + BQL?
I can get some results back on it too. One less than perfect option or
the other would be better than continuing to have lousy wifi in all
cases on all platforms.

> Thanks,
> Ben
>
>
> --
> Ben Greear <[email protected]>
> Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com
>


--

Dave Täht
CTO, TekLibre, LLC
http://www.teklibre.com
Tel: 1-831-205-9740

2018-11-20 02:21:09

by David Lang

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [Make-wifi-fast] [PATCH v3 3/6] mac80211: Add airtime accounting and scheduling to TXQs

On Mon, 19 Nov 2018, Dave Taht wrote:

>> I'm not sure if this was a fluke or not, but at Starbucks recently I sat outside,
>> right next to their window, and could not scan their AP at all. Previously, I sat
>> inside, 3 feet away through the glass, and got great signal. I wonder what that was
>> all about! Maybe special tinting that blocks RF? Or just dumb luck of some sort.
>
> Ya know, I could definitely see a market for a material like that! I'd
> like it for my car, so bluetooth wouldn't escape.

That would break your tire pressure sensors (each car is rolling around
broadcasting 4 unique bluetooth IDs, not hard to track)

David Lang