WiFi Access Point only allows one connection

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?

Hello @morlandi ,

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

Best regards,
Josep

here it is:

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

[Network]
Address=192.168.10.1/24
DHCPServer=yes

[DHCPServer]
PoolOffset=100
PoolSize=30

@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?

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

thank you @josep.tx ! Much appreciated

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

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?)

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