mac80211: add lowest rate into minstrel's random rate sampling table

While minstrel bootstraps and fills the success probabilities of each
rate the lowest rate has typically a very high success probability
(often 100% in our tests).
Its statistics are never updated but considered to setup the mrr chain.
In our tests we see that especially the 3rd mrr stage (which is that
rate providing highest success probability) is filled with the lowest rate
because its initial high sucess probability is never updated. By design
the 4th mrr stage is filled with the lowest rate so often 3rd and 4th
mrr stage are equal.

This patch follows minstrels general approach of assuming as little
as possible about rate dependencies. Consequently we include the
lowest rate into the random sampling table to get balanced up-to-date
statistics of all rates and therefore balanced decisions.

Acked-by: Felix Fietkau <nbd@openwrt.org>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Huehn <thomas@net.t-labs.tu-berlin.de>
Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>

diff --git a/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel.c b/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel.c
index aa59f2962c3827bf3031f6fd395fda0f4fa8f142..5c0f5327c77f9b2e313f19f81f0cc88816e332a5 100644 (file)
--- a/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel.c
+++ b/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel.c
@@ -55,7 +55,6 @@
 #include "rate.h"
 #include "rc80211_minstrel.h"
 
-#define SAMPLE_COLUMNS 10
 #define SAMPLE_TBL(_mi, _idx, _col) \
                _mi->sample_table[(_idx * SAMPLE_COLUMNS) + _col]
 
@@ -210,7 +209,7 @@ minstrel_get_next_sample(struct minstrel_sta_info *mi)
        unsigned int sample_ndx;
        sample_ndx = SAMPLE_TBL(mi, mi->sample_row, mi->sample_column);
        mi->sample_row++;
-       if ((int) mi->sample_row > (mi->n_rates - 2)) {
+       if ((int) mi->sample_row >= mi->n_rates) {
                mi->sample_row = 0;
                mi->sample_column++;
                if (mi->sample_column >= SAMPLE_COLUMNS)
@@ -370,26 +369,21 @@ static void
 init_sample_table(struct minstrel_sta_info *mi)
 {
        unsigned int i, col, new_idx;
-       unsigned int n_srates = mi->n_rates - 1;
        u8 rnd[8];
 
        mi->sample_column = 0;
        mi->sample_row = 0;
-       memset(mi->sample_table, 0, SAMPLE_COLUMNS * mi->n_rates);
+       memset(mi->sample_table, 0xff, SAMPLE_COLUMNS * mi->n_rates);
 
        for (col = 0; col < SAMPLE_COLUMNS; col++) {
-               for (i = 0; i < n_srates; i++) {
+               for (i = 0; i < mi->n_rates; i++) {
                        get_random_bytes(rnd, sizeof(rnd));
-                       new_idx = (i + rnd[i & 7]) % n_srates;
+                       new_idx = (i + rnd[i & 7]) % mi->n_rates;
 
-                       while (SAMPLE_TBL(mi, new_idx, col) != 0)
-                               new_idx = (new_idx + 1) % n_srates;
+                       while (SAMPLE_TBL(mi, new_idx, col) != 0xff)
+                               new_idx = (new_idx + 1) % mi->n_rates;
 
-                       /* Don't sample the slowest rate (i.e. slowest base
-                        * rate). We must presume that the slowest rate works
-                        * fine, or else other management frames will also be
-                        * failing and the link will break */
-                       SAMPLE_TBL(mi, new_idx, col) = i + 1;
+                       SAMPLE_TBL(mi, new_idx, col) = i;
                }
        }
 }

diff --git a/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel.h b/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel.h
index 200b7e3632da710c5e55c29864dabe530f3c15e6..a0ccc5779910fa0fdfbe337a8ee929a6288737be 100644 (file)
--- a/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel.h
+++ b/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel.h
@@ -9,7 +9,9 @@
 #ifndef __RC_MINSTREL_H
 #define __RC_MINSTREL_H
 
-#define EWMA_LEVEL 75  /* ewma weighting factor [%] */
+#define EWMA_LEVEL     75      /* ewma weighting factor [%] */
+#define SAMPLE_COLUMNS 10      /* number of columns in sample table */
+
 
 /* scaled fraction values */
 #define MINSTREL_SCALE  16

diff --git a/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel_ht.c b/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel_ht.c
index 3009e457e7587c57373dbfda067735307b07f6b7..749552bdcfe1eb2d21e1064999dbf08904a54cf6 100644 (file)
--- a/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel_ht.c
+++ b/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel_ht.c
@@ -17,7 +17,6 @@
 #include "rc80211_minstrel_ht.h"
 
 #define AVG_PKT_SIZE   1200
-#define SAMPLE_COLUMNS 10
 
 /* Number of bits for an average sized packet */
 #define MCS_NBITS (AVG_PKT_SIZE << 3)