Re: [PATCH 1/2] mac80211: introduce IEEE80211_HW_TEARDOWN_AGGR_ON_BAR_FAIL

[Christian Lamparter <chunkeey@googlemail.com>]

On Monday, December 03, 2012 03:13:55 PM Andreas Hartmann wrote:
> Stanislaw Gruszka wrote:
> > Commit f0425beda4d404a6e751439b562100b902ba9c98 "mac80211: retry sending
> > failed BAR frames later instead of tearing down aggr" caused regression
> > on rt2x00 hardware (connection hangs).
> 
> This patch caused a problem, too, with carl9170
> (http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireless.general/92203/focus=92376).
> How did they fix it (the thread unfortunately ends without any solution
> / patch).

This was fixed by: carl9170: fix HT peer BA session corruption
(c9122c0d63a50 in wireless-testing). The issue here is that the
hardware does not set the tx success bit when it receives a
BA for a sent BAR [looks like it is expecting a legacy ACK?!
but who knows - the original vendor driver [otus] didn't really
deal with BARs anyway].

So the driver has to do that job and currently it's done in
the following way:
When mac80211 sends a BAR, the driver will keep a reference of
the frame around in ar->bar_list, before it is sent on its way.
If the device receives a BA within the retry window then the
driver's rx-path will enter carl9170_ba_check. This function
sets the TX_STAT_ACK flag [for the BAR] if the incoming BA
matches.

While there are a few problems with this approach [added tx and rx
overhead due to flexible ba filtering and bar queuing, unwanted BAR
retries, ...], it was one of the better solution which was within
the capabilities of the hardware, firmware and driver.
Obviously, if the ar9170 hardware would just set that tx success
bit [ath9k mac does this properly], this wouldn't be necessary.

Regards,
	Chr