Arnd Bergmann [off-list ref] writes:

On Wednesday, July 20, 2016 7:25:19 AM CEST Jes Sorensen wrote:

quoted

Arnd Bergmann [off-list ref] writes:
Well it really all depends on how much time I have and how much others
step up and help contribute to the code. For rtl8xxxu my plans are as
follows:

1) rtl8188eu support, since this is the most widely distributed USB
dongle which isn't currently supported by a non staging driver. I am
currently working on this together with Andrea Merello.

Ok, cool.

quoted

2) Beacon support for IBSS and AP mode - hopefully this should make it
possible to default rtl8xxxu for rtl8192cu/rtl8188cu devices and disable
them in rtlwifi.

Do we have any indication that those two actually work in rtlwifi at the
moment? My experience seems to match the recommendations for all the
raspberry pi users that use yet another (worse looking) driver:

https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/commit/9ee31007a5032a3afe2fcb20c36b34f0ad57df56

I am not really authoritative on that one. I tried it in station mode
and it didn't work well for me. I never played with AP mode - It may
work better in IBSS or AP mode than it does in station mode. I don't
like to pull the rug away under people, which is why I haven't pushed
for this.

quoted

quoted

As one data point that I can provide (but you are probably
aware of), I could never get my rtl8188cus stick to work with
rtlwifi, but I found the older r8712u device to work fine with
the staging/rtl8712 driver.

I'd love to hear if the rtl8188cus works better with rtl8xxxu.

It took me far too long to get the driver running on my machine (all my fault),
but I've tested it now. Unfortunately there is something very wrong
with my home wireless network at the moment, so I can only confirm
that it doesn't work any worse than my Intel Wireless card on 2.4GHz,
but that isn't any good (5GHz devices are fine, but that doesn't
help on a 2.4GHz-only device).

This is what I see in the kernel log

[  773.862848] usb 2-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 8 using ehci-pci
[  773.957415] usb 2-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=8176
[ 773.957425] usb 2-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2,
SerialNumber=3
[  773.957430] usb 2-1.2: Manufacturer: Realtek
[  773.957433] usb 2-1.2: SerialNumber: 00e04c000001
[  774.115182] usb 2-1.2: Vendor: Realtek
[  774.115192] usb 2-1.2: Product: 
[  774.115199] usb 2-1.2: rtl8192cu_parse_efuse: dumping efuse (0x80 bytes):
[  774.115206] usb 2-1.2: 00: 29 81 00 74 ed 00 00 00
[  774.115212] usb 2-1.2: 08: ff 00 da 0b 76 81 01 41
[  774.115219] usb 2-1.2: 10: 32 00 85 62 7e ad 5c f3
[  774.115225] usb 2-1.2: 18: 70 15 9c b1 0a 03 52 65
[  774.115231] usb 2-1.2: 20: 61 6c 74 65 6b 00 02 03
[  774.115237] usb 2-1.2: 28: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115242] usb 2-1.2: 30: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115248] usb 2-1.2: 38: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115254] usb 2-1.2: 40: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115260] usb 2-1.2: 48: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115265] usb 2-1.2: 50: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115271] usb 2-1.2: 58: 06 00 2a 2a 2a 00 00 00
[  774.115277] usb 2-1.2: 60: 2a 2a 2a 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115283] usb 2-1.2: 68: 00 00 00 00 04 04 04 00
[  774.115289] usb 2-1.2: 70: 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 00
[  774.115295] usb 2-1.2: 78: 10 00 00 00 36 00 00 00
[ 774.115302] usb 2-1.2: RTL8188CU rev A (TSMC) 1T1R, TX queues 2,
WiFi=1, BT=0, GPS=0, HI PA=0
[  774.115308] usb 2-1.2: RTL8188CU MAC: 5c:f3:70:15:9c:b1
[ 774.115314] usb 2-1.2: rtl8xxxu: Loading firmware
rtlwifi/rtl8192cufw_TMSC.bin
[  774.115409] usb 2-1.2: Firmware revision 80.0 (signature 0x88c1)
[  775.692344] rtl8xxxu 2-1.2:1.0 wlan1: renamed from wlan0
[  775.721151] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan1: link is not ready
[  775.746653] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan1: link is not ready
[  775.798780] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan1: link is not ready
[  788.414618] wlan2: authenticate with 22:4e:7f:6f:5b:3c
[  788.452485] wlan2: send auth to 22:4e:7f:6f:5b:3c (try 1/3)
[  788.457926] wlan2: authenticated
[  788.462261] wlan2: associate with 22:4e:7f:6f:5b:3c (try 1/3)
[ 788.475159] wlan2: RX AssocResp from 22:4e:7f:6f:5b:3c (capab=0x431
status=0 aid=1)
[  788.504683] wlan2: associated

That all looks reasonable to me.

throughput for me is 2mbit/s, compared to my intel 2x2 wireless that gets
5mbit/s on the same network, but I guess that doesn't really mean much
as long as I have problems with the infrastructure.

:) Note the rtl8xxxu driver doesn't report speeds properly to
NetworkMangler or 'iw' as the API for this relies on confirmed TX
speeds, and I only have an easy way of retrieving RX speeds from the RTL
device. The vendor driver probably fakes it.

rtl8xxxu  IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"openwrt24-ab"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 22:4E:7F:6F:5B:3C   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=47/70  Signal level=-63 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:38   Missed beacon:0

iwlwifi   IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"openwrt24-ab"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 22:4E:7F:6F:5B:3C   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=65/70  Signal level=-45 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:90  Invalid misc:146   Missed beacon:0

quoted

For the rtl8712 device, rtl8192su?, then potentially that could be added to
rtl8xxxu as well, but it's not a top priority on my list right now.

This one:
Bus 001 Device 033: ID 0bda:8171 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188SU
802.11n WLAN Adapter

I bought the rtl8188su a while ago, while the rtl8188cus (0bda:8176)
is from this year. According to https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Realtek, it
seems to be one year older than the rtl8188cus and was almost as common
in its day. Apparently everyone that used to make ...su device replaced it
with a ...cu or the newer ...eu chips and that is all you can buy these days
on the low end.

Gotcha, 8188su is the 1x1 version of it. I do have a 8192su in the
drawer somewhere, but the TODO list is a bit long already :)

Cheers,
Jes