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WL1837MOD: Driver & wpa_supplicant trees to use for 802.11s WiFi Mesh SAE support

Andrew Fouts
Prodigy 160 points
Part Number: WL1837MOD


We have an embedded device that utilizes the TI WL1837MOD module, and we're currently attempting to support 802.11s WiFi Mesh with SAE authentication.  We're currently using the following:

  • Kernel: v3.10 (mainline)
  • wl18xx driver: Mainline Linux kernel driver backported from v4.12
  • wl18xx firmware: 8.9.0.0.75
  • wpa_supplicant: 2.7 (mainline)

Open mesh networking seems to work fine.  However, we are encountering errors when attempting to enable SAE.  I've attached a log file from wpa_supplicant showing SAE being attempted but not succeeding.  We attempt to ping other peers in the network, and when SAE is enabled, these pings fail.wl18xx_wpa_supplicant_sae.tar.gz

I see previous discussion on these forums discussing issues on using SAE: https://e2e.ti.com/support/wireless-connectivity/wifi/f/968/t/672135.  However, there was not a clear resolution to that discussion.  The last comment mentions some efforts to get the TI Wilink 8 R8.7_SP3 patches upstreamed to mainline.  However looking at the driver in mainline Linux, many of the changes from the R8.7_SP3 driver appear to be missing, including the commits mentioned in that discussion to get SAE working.

I thus have the following questions:

  • What is the recommended driver tree to use for the WL1837MOD?  I see the following options:
    • Update to the latest mainline Linux version of the driver
    • Attempt to switch to the TI R8.7_SP3 version
    • Attempt to patch our 4.12-based driver with patches required to fix SAE.
  • What is the recommended wpa_supplicant tree to use for the WL1837MOD?  We have not seen any issues with the mainline wpa_supplicant other than SAE not working, and I'd prefer to stick to mainline so that we can support newer features in the future (e.g. WPA3).  Are there TI-specific changes to wpa_supplicant that we would need to pull into mainline in order to support SAE?
  • I saw some mention in the previously referenced discussion that there were 802.11s issues with wl18xx firmware 8.9.0.0.70 or newer.  We have not seen any mesh issues so far other than with SAE.  Is there any reason we need to downgrade the wl18xx firmware?  Are we fine to upgrade to the last released wl18xx firmware (8.9.0.0.79)?

Please let me know if you require more details about our hardware, software, or test setup.