use wifi as a client and an access point at the same time?

Feature Requests
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1

hardware:
Verdin i.MX8M Plus V1.1A + Dahlia V1.1C + wifi AzureWave AW-CM276NF

software:
Torizon 5.6.0-devel-202203+build.22 (2022-03-08) with all demo kiosk containers

issue:
Can we use wifi as a client and an access point at the same time?

e.g.: I would like the IMX8m to connect to our office wifi to upload some data, and in the same time I want to use my phone to connect to a hot spot access point created by the same IMX8m in order to browse the web service.

We already implemented this in a container with NetworkManager for both wifi client and wifi hotspot. It works at the begining, but while we try to browse the web service the system becomes unstable.

2

Greetings @jeffreyx,

Let me check with our team whether this use-case is known to work well or not. But first of all for clarification could you specify how exactly you implemented client and access point functionality simultaneously. Also could you clarify what you mean by the system was “unstable”?

Best Regards,
Jeremias

3

Thanks for the reply Jeremias,

client and access point function : The client is constantly TCP upload large data from Toradex to another PC. The Access point is constantly connected from an iPhone, to http get data from a web server inside the Toradex.

unstable : network offline. we got similar error message as this thread Verdin imx8mp V1.0D wifi dies with mmc0: Timeout waiting for hardware interrupt

4

I checked with our team and it seems this is a known issue at the moment. To clarify, reportedly this should work in theory, but in actuality it seems to be unstable at the moment similar to what you described.

The team is still investigating this issue at the moment. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any good workarounds at the moment I can share with you.

Best Regards,
Jeremias

5

Please pay attention to Wi-Fi channels on both sta and uap sides. 5GHz on one of them and 2.4GHz on another seems not working at all. It may work if both are in the same frequency bands.