RE: RTL8723BE performance regression

From: Pkshih
Date: Wed May 02 2018 - 01:45:12 EST




> -----Original Message-----
> From: JoÃo Paulo Rechi Vita [mailto:jprvita@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2018 6:41 AM
> To: Larry Finger
> Cc: Steve deRosier; èåå; Pkshih; Birming Chiu; Shaofu; Steven Ting; Chaoming_Li; Kalle Valo;
> linux-wireless; Network Development; LKML; Daniel Drake; JoÃo Paulo Rechi Vita; linux@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: RTL8723BE performance regression
>
> On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 7:51 PM, Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On 04/03/2018 09:37 PM, JoÃo Paulo Rechi Vita wrote:
> >>
> >> On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 7:28 PM, Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> (...)
> >>
> >>> As the antenna selection code changes affected your first bisection, do
> >>> you
> >>> have one of those HP laptops with only one antenna and the incorrect
> >>> coding
> >>> in the FUSE?
> >>
> >>
> >> Yes, that is why I've been passing ant_sel=1 during my tests -- this
> >> was needed to achieve a good performance in the past, before this
> >> regression. I've also opened the laptop chassis and confirmed the
> >> antenna cable is plugged to the connector labeled with "1" on the
> >> card.
> >>
> >>> If so, please make sure that you still have the same signal
> >>> strength for good and bad cases. I have tried to keep the driver and the
> >>> btcoex code in sync, but there may be some combinations of antenna
> >>> configuration and FUSE contents that cause the code to fail.
> >>>
> >>
> >> What is the recommended way to monitor the signal strength?
> >
> >
> > The btcoex code is developed for multiple platforms by a different group
> > than the Linux driver. I think they made a change that caused ant_sel to
> > switch from 1 to 2. At least numerous comments at
> > github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new claimed they needed to make that change.
> >
> > Mhy recommended method is to verify the wifi device name with "iw dev". Then
> > using that device
> >
> > sudo iw dev <dev_name> scan | egrep "SSID|signal"
> >
>
> I have confirmed that the performance regression is indeed tied to
> signal strength: on the good cases signal was between -16 and -8 dBm,
> whereas in bad cases signal was always between -50 to - 40 dBm. I've
> also switched to testing bandwidth in controlled LAN environment using
> iperf3, as suggested by Steve deRosier, with the DUT being the only
> machine connected to the 2.4 GHz radio and the machine running the
> iperf3 server connected via ethernet.
>

We have new experimental results in commit af8a41cccf8f46 ("rtlwifi: cleanup
8723be ant_sel definition"). You can use the above commit and do the same
experiments (with ant_sel=0, 1 and 2) in your side, and then share your results.
Since performance is tied to signal strength, you can only share signal strength.

Regards
PK