Re: [RFC v2] mac80211: Use libnl-configurable values for retry counts

[Felix Fietkau <nbd@openwrt.org>]

On 2013-07-02 7:40 PM, Jean-Pierre Tosoni wrote:
> Hi Felix,
> 
> Sorry to use your time again...
> 
>> But much more important than that is to not cause regressions for other
>> people via aggressive packet dropping.
> 
> Agreed, but see below.
> 
>> If you put the code in minstrel (and minstrel_ht), it not only allows
>> making a better tradeoff for retry handling, the code also doesn't have
>> to be run for every single packet. You can run it during the rate
>> control stats update.
> 
> OK, I'll have a look at that part now.
> 
>> 
>> The reduction of retry attempts definitely needs to be balanced
>> properly. Retries with max_prob_rate can be more important than retries
>> with max_tp_rate, but there needs to be a minimum for each of those.
> 
> This leads to a question about regressions and backward compatibility:
> 
> Since minstrel can compute as much as 28 retries for a frame,
> And since the (standard) default value for "short_frame_max_tx_count" is 7,
> 
> ... there is no way I can enforce the configured value while keeping
> minstrel counts by default !
> The standard itself gives a very aggressive limit! Or am I mistaken about
> the significance of this configuration parameter ?
I think you're right about this. Specifically because the standard limit
is much lower than what is being used now, we need to really make sure
that it's applied in a way that it does not harm the normal use case in
any visible way.

- Felix