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To:     "linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org" <linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org>
From:   Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>
Subject: mac80211 mlme connection probing woes
Organization: Candela Technologies
Message-ID: <312fa32e-21f7-fcc0-fef4-55633db53f65@candelatech.com>
Date:   Fri, 26 Mar 2021 17:18:20 -0700
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I've been digging into a bug where our ath10k driver shows periodic
throughput drops on regular intervals.  We've bisected this down to a patch
where we disable the firmware connection monitor, and so ask mac80211 to
do the connection monitor.

This works fine in 5.4 kernel, but in 5.11, it does not work well.

First, if anyone has an idea what change might have caused this,
please let me know.  We will try with ath9k, assuming it uses
the mac80211 connection monitor to see if it has the same issue.

And second, if a STA is doing traffic that is passing to/from the AP,
why probe the connection at all?  We get tx status showing success, and also valid
rx packets from AP, shouldn't that cause the probe timer to
defer?

Thanks,
Ben

-- 
Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com