I've been experiencing constant Wi-Fi drops on my GL-MT3600BE (Beryl 7) running firmware 4.9.0 and 4.9.1. Devices would randomly disconnect because the router's radio was crashing.
After checking the logs, I found a clear Kernel Panic caused by the proprietary MediaTek mt_wifi driver. It seems to crash when the router attempts to manage power states (LPI) or switch channels while MLO is active.
The Workaround: I managed to completely stabilize the router by doing two things:
Disabling MLO (Multi-Link Operation).
Changing the 5GHz channel from "Auto" to a fixed, non-DFS channel (e.g., 157).
Once MLO is disabled and the channel is fixed, the Kernel Panics stop entirely.
Could the dev team please look into this mt_wifi driver bug and include a fix in the next firmware release? I can provide the full crash logs if needed. Thank you!
We tested this locally on an MT3600BE running firmware v4.9.1 with MLO enabled and the 5 GHz channel set to Auto. We also generated continuous Wi-Fi traffic and manually changed the 5 GHz channel several times while MLO was enabled, but so far we have not been able to reproduce the same kernel panic.
Could you please share the exact steps and Wi-Fi configuration that usually lead to the issue on your device? For example, what clients are connected when it occurs, whether an MLO client is connected, any Wi-Fi settings that differ from the defaults, and approximately how long or after what operation the crash normally occurs.
If the issue occurs again, please also send us the complete Crash Log and System Log via private message.
I believe I know why you couldn't reproduce the issue in your lab. You mentioned that you generated continuous Wi-Fi traffic. However, the kernel panic occurs specifically in the MtAsicSetLpi function (Low Power Idle). Because you had continuous traffic, the router likely never entered the LPI state.
Additionally, my Wi-Fi configuration had a very specific non-default setup that might be causing the wdev is null error:
My Exact Configuration:
The MLO network was ENABLED.
The dedicated 2.4 GHz Main Network was DISABLED (toggle turned off in the UI).
The 5 GHz Main Network was ENABLED and set to "Auto" channel.
I was running an AmneziaWG (WireGuard) client on the router.
Connected Clients: a couple of phones, an iPad, and maybe a couple of other low-power devices.
How the crash occurs: It does not happen under heavy load. It happens randomly when the network is mostly idle (allowing LPI to kick in) AND the router performs an automatic DFS channel switch in the background. My system.log shows IEEE 802.11 driver had channel switch just moments before the router reboots.
So, the crash formula seems to be: Disabled 2.4GHz radio + Enabled MLO + Idle clients (LPI active) + Background DFS channel hop.
I have just sent you my complete crash.log and system.log via private message as requested. Let me know if you need me to test any beta firmwares with a potential fix!