Linux Should Soon Start Receiving "Make WiFi Fast" Improvements

In the months ahead the Linux kernel should start receiving the work out of the "make-wifi-fast" initiative for improving WiFi reliability and performance.

The Bufferbloat project has been working on the Make-WiFi-Fast project because "the current Linux WiFi stack and drivers are far from optimal." The project aims to reduce latency, develop new packet scheduling and AQM techniques, and improve the stack to allow 802.11ac MU-MIMO to properly work.

One of the Bufferbloat lead developers Dave Taht has shared in an email to Phoronix that they hope to begin merging some of the code. Some of this work includes FQ_codel for the ath10k driver, the same treatment for ath9k to better improve the performance for this driver, and then fixing an important bug too.

Taht says they expect most of the code to enter LEDE (Linux Embedded Development Environment) and net-next this month. Thus it's not coming for mainline 4.9 but the start of these WiFi improvements should begin landing for Linux 4.10, due out in early 2017.