Verify that we can connect enough clients to Kiwix-Hotspot

[ghost]

@kelson42 commented on Nov 11, 2020, 8:06 AM UTC:

This ticket of IIAB is pretty worrying iiab/iiab#823

This issue was moved by kelson42 from offspot/kiwix-hotspot#544.

[ghost]

@Popolechien commented on Nov 11, 2020, 9:10 AM UTC:

So, practically speaking, should we get X people together to try and connect to a device? (it's going to be difficult to pull together these days, tbh)

[ghost]

@kelson42 commented on Nov 12, 2020, 8:07 AM UTC:

@tim-moody Do you know a way to simulate the wifi clients?

[ghost]

@tim-moody commented on Nov 12, 2020, 12:53 PM UTC:

@kelson42 my efforts are rather crude, but are at https://github.com/iiab/iiab-factory/tree/master/testing/wifi-testing

I was unable to establish multiple ip addresses on wifi devices, unlike on wired devices, so I used usb hubs with wifi dongles. This allowed me to have 10 wifi devices per raspberry pi for testing. I found 10 to be the point at which reliability was acceptable. More than that the usb hubs tend to disconnect after 30 minutes or so.

There is a small service that runs on the server to receive test requests and a python client that creates the connections and then makes requests and reports status.

This is the hardware I used:

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B008IFXQFU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B014ZQ07NE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Plus rpi 4s . My latest config is I put one usb hub with 7 dongles and 2 additional dongles directly on the rpi4, which gives me 10 devices counting the builtin wifi.

[ghost]

@kelson42 commented on Nov 12, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC:

@tim-moody Thank you very much for your quick and helpful answer. We will have a look, but this looks promising.

[ghost]

@tim-moody commented on Nov 12, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC:

@kelson42 hopefully you can publish your results.

Here is my summary of iiab/iiab#823 and some other findings.

https://iiab.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/231879-iiab-devel/topic/rpi.20wifi.20firmware

[ghost]

@kelson42 commented on Nov 12, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC:

@tim-moody We are not even sure we are even impacted. Considering that this investigation takes a bit of time, we won't have a look to that before 2021. But this ticket will be then updated ASAP.

[ghost]

stale[bot] commented on Jan 14, 2021, 4:44 AM UTC:

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be now be reviewed manually. Thank you for your contributions.

[ghost]

stale[bot] commented on Jul 20, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC:

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be now be reviewed manually. Thank you for your contributions.

[ghost]

@kelson42 commented on Jul 25, 2021, 8:43 AM UTC:

Here is an appliance doing that https://smartechconsulting.com/product/ixia-ixwlan-sed-wi-fi-device-and-network-tester/

[ghost]

@kelson42 commented on Jul 25, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC:

Seems the Hawking HD45U supports up to 8 interfaces (https://www.cwnp.com/forums/posts?To-simulate-100-WLAN-clients-124128). With 4 of them (via USB switch), it should be possible to instrument them and test how many of them can simultanously connect to an AP. See @tim-moody work. Follower version seems to be https://www.hawkingtech.com/product wifi-ac1750-usb-adapter/

[ghost]

@kelson42 commented on Jul 25, 2021, 11:21 AM UTC:

One other thing which can be done, is buying/configuring 32 ESP8266 chipsets in Micro Python. Let them automatically connect to a predefined wifi network and see how many of them achieve it. We could probably get the hardware for ~300 USD. If @rgaudin would be motivated to play with that, I think that might be a viable approach.

[ghost]

@kelson42 commented on Jul 25, 2021, 12:15 PM UTC:

An other approach would be to buy a 32 ports USB hub https://www.amazon.com/Eyeboot-Port-240W-Powered-Charging/dp/B07TLBWRZ6, plug 31 wifi dongles, and run a script on a linux computer (or instrumented RPI).

[ghost]

@kelson42 commented on Jul 25, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC:

TL-WN725 seems to be a pretty good dongle for our use case https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008IFXQFU/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=linuxhint-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B008IFXQFU&linkId=165bb901a0118279f383b80ee2702776#customerReviews

with https://www.amazon.com/Sipolar-USB-Hubs-Refurbished-Charging-Tablet-Applicate-Marketing/dp/B07KQ1L8JV for the hub and I would connect a RPI to run the test script.

Actually such a RPi could run more than just a wifi connection test.

[ghost]

stale[bot] commented on Sep 24, 2021, 7:18 AM UTC:

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be now be reviewed manually. Thank you for your contributions.

[rgaudin]

Bookmarking https://www.bortzmeyer.org/benchmark-http.html