Raspberry Pi Friendly (Raspbian) Linux kernel driver for USB WiFi dongles based on Realtek rtl8812au chipset.
This is a fork of gordboy/rtl8812au, which is based on 5.2.9 realtek driver version, obtained from ftp3.realtek.com.tw, as described here:
It has a few patches on top of it to make it work in 802.11ac (VHT) mode (at least with hostapd), remove hardcoded regulatory restrictions, print more debug info by default (can be disabled via module parameters) and override default txpower values (via rtw_tx_pwr_idx_override module option, see modinfo), plus a few other misc ad-hoc tweaks.
Afaik 5.2.9 wasn't tested as extensively as older rtl8812au version (e.g. 5.1.5), but seem to have straightforward improvements and patches, so what can possibly go wrong? :)
(see "old-5.1.5" branch here for when it does)
Also, it's configured by default to build on ODROID-C2 (arm64/aarch64) platform, not x86, but can be easily reconfigured to build there too by e.g. running this sed line:
sed -i \ -e 's:^\(CONFIG_PLATFORM_.*= *\).*:\1n:' \ -e 's:^\(CONFIG_PLATFORM_I386_PC *= *\).*:\1y:' Makefile
(or alternatively running patch -l -i Makefile.x86.patch, does same thing)
For ArchLinuxARM PKGBUILD of module from this repo for ODROID-C2 (aarch64, mainline 4.13.x+ kernel), see:
gordboy/rtl8812au repository has info and helper files for debian-based distros (e.g. ubuntu):
I'm not supporting or developing this driver here, just collected a bunch of ad-hoc patches from different sources for my own purposes.
Please do not ask me to add or merge additional featues or fix something here - I'm not a kernel developer and don't even have hardware to test this locally.
Maybe just fork the repo and apply whatever you need there instead, or complain about anything that doesn't work right to hardware vendor or realtek (though note that they haven't released this code publicly - see source links at the top of this README).
Important: these test results are for previous 5.1.5 driver version with same VHT patches, results on 5.2.9 (codebase here) may vary!
Should very heavily depend on card/dongle used, but with ALFA Network AWUS036AC USB dongles plugged into RPi3/ODROID-C2 that I've tested using WiFi Infrastructure mode (AP + STA) over VHT (802.11ac) with 80MHz channels (in 5GHz band) and TX-STBC-2BY1/RX-STBC-1 MIMO parameters, throughput limit seem to be about 220mbps or ~26 MiB/s (half-duplex).
I.e. something that looks like this:
root@odc2:~# iperf3 -c 10.4.0.1 -t120 Connecting to host 10.4.0.1, port 5201 [ 4] local 10.4.0.2 port 53667 connected to 10.4.0.1 port 5201 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr Cwnd [ 4] 0.00-1.00 sec 20.0 MBytes 168 Mbits/sec 0 406 KBytes [ 4] 1.00-2.00 sec 24.1 MBytes 202 Mbits/sec 0 471 KBytes [ 4] 2.00-3.00 sec 21.7 MBytes 182 Mbits/sec 0 502 KBytes [ 4] 3.00-4.00 sec 22.7 MBytes 191 Mbits/sec 0 550 KBytes [ 4] 4.00-5.00 sec 22.2 MBytes 186 Mbits/sec 0 570 KBytes [ 4] 5.00-6.00 sec 23.0 MBytes 193 Mbits/sec 0 595 KBytes [ 4] 6.00-7.00 sec 21.4 MBytes 179 Mbits/sec 0 617 KBytes [ 4] 7.00-8.00 sec 21.5 MBytes 180 Mbits/sec 0 636 KBytes [ 4] 8.00-9.00 sec 25.1 MBytes 211 Mbits/sec 0 663 KBytes [ 4] 9.00-10.00 sec 25.7 MBytes 216 Mbits/sec 0 689 KBytes [ 4] 10.00-11.00 sec 27.2 MBytes 228 Mbits/sec 0 708 KBytes [ 4] 11.00-12.00 sec 27.3 MBytes 229 Mbits/sec 0 747 KBytes [ 4] 12.00-13.00 sec 25.1 MBytes 210 Mbits/sec 0 769 KBytes [ 4] 13.00-14.00 sec 25.9 MBytes 217 Mbits/sec 0 775 KBytes [ 4] 14.00-15.00 sec 26.0 MBytes 218 Mbits/sec 0 826 KBytes [ 4] 15.00-16.00 sec 25.5 MBytes 214 Mbits/sec 0 871 KBytes [ 4] 16.00-17.00 sec 26.6 MBytes 223 Mbits/sec 0 888 KBytes [ 4] 17.00-18.00 sec 24.0 MBytes 201 Mbits/sec 0 892 KBytes [ 4] 18.00-19.00 sec 26.5 MBytes 222 Mbits/sec 0 921 KBytes [ 4] 19.00-20.00 sec 26.6 MBytes 223 Mbits/sec 0 933 KBytes [ 4] 20.00-21.00 sec 26.3 MBytes 221 Mbits/sec 0 952 KBytes [ 4] 21.00-22.00 sec 26.3 MBytes 221 Mbits/sec 0 981 KBytes [ 4] 22.00-23.00 sec 26.9 MBytes 225 Mbits/sec 0 1008 KBytes [ 4] 23.00-24.00 sec 26.5 MBytes 223 Mbits/sec 0 1014 KBytes [ 4] 24.00-25.00 sec 22.6 MBytes 190 Mbits/sec 0 1.00 MBytes ^C[ 4] 25.00-25.91 sec 21.6 MBytes 199 Mbits/sec 0 1.00 MBytes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr [ 4] 0.00-25.91 sec 638 MBytes 207 Mbits/sec 0 sender [ 4] 0.00-25.91 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec receiver iperf3: interrupt - the client has terminated
Again, these results are for one specific pair of AP/STA dongles, running in a specific environment and configuration, so does not mean that other devices supported by this driver will have same limitations, and are here just to show that driver itself can at least support that much throughput (easily - extra cpu load is negligible).
Relevant hostapd.conf options used for this specific dongle and test:
hw_mode=a ieee80211n=1 require_ht=1 ieee80211ac=1 require_vht=1 channel=149 vht_oper_chwidth=1 vht_oper_centr_freq_seg0_idx=155 ht_capab=[HT40+][SHORT-GI-40] vht_capab=[SHORT-GI-80][TX-STBC-2BY1][MAX-MPDU-11454][MAX-A-MPDU-LEN-EXP7][RX-STBC-1]
Same as for test results, these aren't necessarily supported by all dongles, and some dongles might allow e.g. 160MHz or 80+80 channel widths (different vht_oper_chwidth values), 2x2 or 4x4 STBC, beamforming, and such, which driver seem to have the code for.
For more information about what your specific dongle supports and is configured
for, use /proc interface that this driver provides under /proc/net/rtl8812au/.
Some useful info nodes there (replace "wlan0" below with your interface name):
/proc/net/rtl8812au/ver_info- loaded driver version./proc/net/rtl8812au/drv_cfg- build-time driver configuration info./proc/net/rtl8812au/log_level- kmsg (dmesg) logging control./proc/net/rtl8812au/wlan0/phy_cap- phy capabilities (VHT, STBC, Beamforming, etc), as supported by hardware/driver and configuration, including resulting mask of them./proc/net/rtl8812au/wlan0/ap_info(andsta_info).- ... and many more, in addition to rather extensive logging that is enabled by default.
For a bit more info on AP/STA mode configuration, see following links:
- http://blog.fraggod.net/2017/04/27/wifi-hostapd-configuration-for-80211ac-networks.html
- mk-fg/archlinux-pkgbuilds#2 (comment)
Repositories that seem to be most active (as of April 2017) wrt info on this driver, i.e. places to watch for new issues, commits, pull requests and forks (in no particular order):
- https://github.com/gordboy/rtl8812au/
- https://github.com/abperiasamy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux/
- https://github.com/uminokoe/rtl8812AU/ (gone!)
- https://github.com/diederikdehaas/rtl8812AU/
- https://github.com/astsam/rtl8812au/ (esp. for 8814A and radiotap stuff)
- https://github.com/gnab/rtl8812au/
- https://github.com/Grawp/rtl8812au_rtl8821au/
- https://github.com/ulli-kroll/rtl8821au/
Not all (or any?) of these forks are linked under "Forks" tab on github.
Be sure to check different branches in these, as there are several different upstream sources (code dumps) for this driver, which these are usually based on.
More general links:
Documentation for various driver features (dated from around 2015, not up-to-date with the code): see document/ dir in this repo
Datasheet: https://wenku.baidu.com/view/733fb49602020740be1e9bb0.html
- Other ArchLinux AUR builds for this module (from different repos):
