MT7688AN and MT7610E transmit power throttled on Wavlink WL-WN570HA1

[Andrew17856]

The Wavlink WL-WN570HA1 supports 27dBm and 25dBm on its 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz radios respectively. See the commit page:

https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commit;h=a160f50d4f240019fafe95e80701ebb871c788fe

• 2.4 GHz: 802.11b/g/n SoC, 1T1R, 27 dBm
• 5 GHz: 802.11a/n/ac MT7610E, 1T1R, 25 dBm

Since upgrading to OpenWRT the signal strength is materially reduced (the radios cannot be set more than 24dBm and 18dBm respectively). The reduced power relative to the stock firmware is confirmed using wireless clients (material reduction in signal strength).

Several people are having the problem. See e.g.
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/is-the-wavlink-wl-wn570ha1-fully-supported/59671

[rimil0uz]

Hi. I have that device and im experiencing problems in the 5Ghz network with openwrt 19.07.2. Does not work at all. I'm really n00b using openwrt and linux so ill try to explain my self as good as I can.

Once you install openwrt 19.07.2 master, you can turn on the 5 ghz radio, in dafault it uses channel 36 and I can connect to the AP for a short period of time (1-3 min) then it starts failing. If you change channel even after a hardreset lets say to channel 100. The wifi don't even show anymore. You get a log like this:

Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 kern.info kernel: [ 439.902903] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan1: link is not ready Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 kern.info kernel: [ 439.919586] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered blocking state Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 kern.info kernel: [ 439.930215] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered disabled state Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 kern.info kernel: [ 439.941134] device wlan1 entered promiscuous mode Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: Channel 100 (primary) not allowed for AP mode, flags: 0x10095b NO-IR RADAR Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.warn hostapd: wlan1: IEEE 802.11 Configured channel (100) not found from the channel list of current mode (2) IEEE 802.11a Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.warn hostapd: wlan1: IEEE 802.11 Hardware does not support configured channel Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.err hostapd: Could not select hw_mode and channel. (-3) Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: interface state UNINITIALIZED->DISABLED Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-DISABLED Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.err hostapd: wlan1: Unable to setup interface. Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: interface state DISABLED->DISABLED Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-DISABLED Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: CTRL-EVENT-TERMINATING Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.err hostapd: hostapd_free_hapd_data: Interface wlan1 wasn't started Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: nl80211: deinit ifname=wlan1 disabled_11b_rates=0 Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 kern.info kernel: [ 439.957085] device wlan1 left promiscuous mode Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 kern.info kernel: [ 439.966103] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered disabled state Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.notice netifd: radio1 (2059): cat: can't open '/var/run/wifi-phy1.pid': No such file or directory Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.notice netifd: radio1 (2059): WARNING (wireless_add_process): executable path /usr/sbin/wpad does not match process path (/proc/exe) Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.notice netifd: radio1 (2059): Command failed: Invalid argument Thu Feb 27 21:12:22 2020 daemon.notice netifd: radio1 (2059): Device setup failed: HOSTAPD_START_FAILED

It was hard for me to find the original firmware but after some months I was able to revert back to original firmware. Although the firmware it self is buggy, the 5 ghz radio is stable, I can change to channel 100 w/o issue and the range is quite decent.

On the other hand I have been using the 2.4ghz network and it works... It was quite stable for more than 2 months. I haven't use it for a long distance, just as client device with 1 wall and maybe 10m on a different floor.

[jfrogg]

I have WN570HA1 running 19.07.3, 5Ghz wi-fi Tx Power cannot be set higher than 13 dBm regardless of the country code used. Setting higher power manually using iw phy phy1 set txpower fixed {value} has no effect.
I found a similar issue: #216 which is closed some time ago.