Beaglebone Black + FreeBSD + USB WiFi = WAP?

[Chris Gordon]

> On Sep 6, 2017, at 8:13 PM, Russell Haley <russ.haley at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Argh! I was just in Maryland and we flew home from Dulles!!! I made
> the client push the date forward to last week so I could be home for
> Labour Day.
> 
> Have fun! (sob, sob, sob). ;)

Sorry you missed it.  I agree that timing wasn’t great with a holiday weekend (for the US at least) on one side and EuroBSDcon very soon afterward, but constraints on the availability of the hotel drove the exact date.  Maybe we can see you in 2019 (we do the conference every other year, opposite MeetBSD).

>>> I used nuttcp for testing the wired connection, so I would plan to use that for the Wifi.
> 
> nuttcp. Got it, I'll start playing with it.

For the testing described in my original email and the data below, I used the most basic options from https://fasterdata.es.net/performance-testing/network-troubleshooting-tools/nuttcp/.  Specifically:

Server:  
	nuttcp -S

Client:
	nuttcp -i1 server_hostname
	and
	nuttcp -i1 -r server_hostname


>>> - Can you run the bbb as a standard device (not an access point) and
>>> test the performance of the wlan0 interface using the method of
>>> measurement pointed above? I will do the same at some point with my
>>> wi-fi dongle.
>> 
>> Yes, that should be easy to do, but will be next week before I have a chance.

I did the above -- setup the BBB as a simple WiFi client to my existing (ancient) access point.  I ran nuttcp between the BBB and my desktop (wired network, access point connected to same wired network).  Both the BBBB and desktop were run as server and client for nuttcp.  Many runs of the various combinations were run.  I saw the following:
- In general between 10 and 20 Mbps, typically on the lower side.  This is consistent for what I see for other devices going to my access point (again, it’s an old access point, circa 2008, so I don’t expect too much from it)
- I did have one period of slow traffic,  1 Mbps and lower.  After a few runs of this, I did a “service netif restart”, dealt with pets for a couple of minutes and when I returned performance was back.
- I just hit another period of slow traffic, but this is around 2.5 Mbps instead of the really bad < 1 Mbps.  Instead of resetting the network, I’m going to let the BBB sit until morning and test again then.   I did test my iPad with a speed test app and it’s getting a little more than 10 Mbps to the internet through the same access point that the BBB is using.

I’ll follow up with what I see in the morning.   My theories at this time (neither very good) are:

- There is a lot of wifi congestion around me and when others are heavily using their wifi, I suffer.  This is exacerbated by something about the usb wifi NIC I have in the BBB.  This doesn’t impact the iPad or other devices due to differences in antennae or some other aspect of their devices.  This idea doesn’t quite fit with everything, but a guess.
- There is something in kernel or wireless stack that degrades over time/amount of traffic passed that ends up limiting performance.

Thanks,
Chris