WiFi Access Point only allows one connection

Technical Support
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1

My setup: Colibri iMX8X - Viola Carrier Board - TorizonCore (5.7.0+build.17)

Hi,

I’ve setup a wifi access point using the instructions found here:
Networking with TorizonCore | Toradex Developer Center

The AP seems to work fine - it allows any device (pc, laptop, phone) to connect and DHCP assigns an ip address to it. I can use that to reach the unit via ssh etc…

However, I’ve noticed a unexpected (at least to me) behavior…
It seems to allow only one device to be connected to the AP at any time. If I’m already connected to the wifi AP with one device, I can’t connect from a different pc. I need to first disconnect from the first one and then I’m allowed to connect with the other one.

Is that normal? I can seem to find any software limitation to the number of allowed connections…is it a hardware limitation of the wifi module?

2

Hello @morlandi ,

Can you send us the contents of your /etc/systemd/network/80-wifi-ap.network?

Best regards,
Josep

3

here it is:

[Match]
Name=uap0
Type=wlan
WLANInterfaceType=ap

[Network]
Address=192.168.10.1/24
DHCPServer=yes

[DHCPServer]
PoolOffset=100
PoolSize=30

4

@josep.tx Thank you in advance for your support.
Does that help? Do you think it’s a software limitation then? Is there any hardware limitation on the wifi chip?

5

Hello @morlandi ,

I have been able to reproduce your issue and have asked internally about the possible root cause and fix . I will post the updates here as soon as I have them.

Best regards,
Josep

1 Like
6

thank you @josep.tx ! Much appreciated

7

Hello @morlandi ,
I have repeated the test with a Verdin module and TorizonCore 6.1 and it was able to connect 2 devices, one Android and one Windows Phone (the limit is 8)

Unfortunately , Colibri iMX8X modules are not yet supported by TorizonCore 6 , but our team is working on it.

Best regards,
Josep

8

hi @josep.tx
thank you for the update.
Can you just clarify this for me? Is this a software issue with TorizonCore then?
If that’s the case, can we manually fix it in the meanwhile? (i.e. can we update any driver or whatever else that is broken?)

9

Hi @morlandi ,

Sorry for the late response. @josep.tx has been quite busy preparing for the Embedded World in Nuremberg.

The exact reason on why this is happening is still a bit of a mystery. There were a lot of changes from Torizon 5 to Torizon 6. After this change the performance seems to be much better.

A possible fix here would be to use the NXP proprietary driver. For us to be able to share this with you we, unfortunately, need an NDA, as without it Toradex is not allowed to share. With this driver we have seen much better behaviour.

Maybe you can send me a personal message here in the community, with the contact that I should reach out to setup an NDA.

Best Regards
Kevin

10

Hello @morlandi ,
Were you able to solve your issue? Do you need additional help on our side?

Best regards,
Josep

11

@josep.tx @kevin.tx

Thank you for your messages. The issue still persists, as you have explained there is nothing we can do on our side to fix it. However we have decided to work with what we have got at the moment - it’s not ideal, but it’s not a deal breaker.

Once TorizonCore 6 becomes available for Colibri iMX8X we will try to rebuild our solution on top of that and hopefully that will fix the problem.

12

Hello @morlandi ,
Thanks for the updates.
As @kevin.tx said, you can give NXP’s proprietary drivers a try (under NDA).

Best regards,
Josep

13

Hello everyone,
I am having the same issue but with an Apalis imx8 board.
I tried it with Torizon 5.7.2 and can connect one device to the access point. The second one does not connect.
I also tried it with Torizon 6.2.0 as well. Here no device can connect, although the AP is showing up

Are there any updates on this issue? Is the NXP proprietary driver something that could help us as well?

Best regards,
Thorbjörn

14

Check the DHCP settings: Make sure that the DHCP server is configured to assign a new IP address to each device that connects to the access point. If the DHCP server is configured to assign a fixed IP address to a specific device, it could prevent other devices from connecting.

15

Hi Alex,
thanks for you fast response.
I am not really sure if this is a DHCP issue here. This is the networkd configuration I am using:

# file: /etc/systemd/network/80-wifi-ap.network
[Match]
Name=uap0
Type=wlan
WLANInterfaceType=ap

[Network]
Address=192.168.8.1/24
DHCPServer=yes

[DHCPServer]
PoolOffset=200
PoolSize=50

It is basically the same configuration from the tutorial mentioned above. According to my knowledge there is no option specified, that a fixed IP address is assigned a specific device.

I also tried using a dnsmasq server inside a docker container instead of using networkd
Here is the dnsmasq.conf file I used:

/etc/dnsmasq.conf:
==================


### DMQ_DNS*
server=8.8.8.8
server=8.8.4.4
no-resolv
local=/local/
expand-hosts
domain-needed
selfmx
dns-loop-detect
domain=local

### DMQ_DHCP*
# dhcp-option=44,172.17.10.1
dhcp-range=192.168.8.110,192.168.8.120,24h
dhcp-option=3,192.168.8.1
dhcp-option=6,192.168.8.253,8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4

Not quite sure if the config does not contain other errors, but the behavior of devices connecting to the AP is the same. The first device gets an IP address and the second one does not.

Lastly, I tried connecting the second device with a pre-configured, static IP address (now again with the networkd DHCP server), 192.168.8.100 in this case.
The behavior here is also strange, although the laptop connects to the AP, it can not ping the AP device (192.168.8.1) and vice versa.

At last I like to mention, that everything is working fine, when I am using Torizon 5.3.0. Then I can connect 2 devices without problem, and also connecting a device with a static IP is working. So I don’t think this is related to misconfiguration of the DHCP server, but rather some kind of driver problem.

Any thoughts on that? Maybe I did indeed misconfigure the server, but I am just not aware of it.

Best regards,
Thorbjörn

16

Hello @n11ThoMumme ,
You can try the NXP proprietary drivers using Torizon 5.7. they are subject to an NDA

17

Hello @n11ThoMumme ,
Do you have any updates on this topic?

Best regards,
Josep

18

HI @josep.tx ,
thanks for the response, forgot to answer here.
I was invited to a Toradex customer slack channel and got in contact with one of the devs.
He told me the problems are known and are in progress regarding the fixes, but he can’t tell me an exact timeline.
Since this is not a super urgent issue for us, we decided to wait until the issues are fixed and then upgrade the Torizon OS.

Best,
Thorbjörn