Thread: [Madwifi-users] madwifi and atheros ar5212 poor performance under 2.6.x
Status: Beta
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From: Ryan <rya...@co...> - 2004-06-25 21:46:05
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Hi all, Basically I'm noticing that madwifi performance is very poor in general when running under any 2.6.x kernel. Transfer rates are poor, connection unreliable, and (oddly) reception is much worse than under 2.4 kernels (or 2.6.x with ndiswrapper). At this point my observations are rather subjective (when running the card under 2.4.x or 2.6.x with ndiswrapper all of the above issues disappear so I know the card itself works well). I'd rather be using madwifi of course ;-) so any help in debugging the issue is appreciated. Specifically, are there tools or steps I should use to pinpoint the source of the troubles? Thank you very much all. -ry Here are some details about my setup: HARDWARE: Dell Inspiron|5100 p4 2.4ghz, 640mb, atheros mini-pci desoldered from a netgear pci card SOFTWARE: -madwifi CVS from today 6/25 (problems have existed ever since I tried 2.6) -FC2 -uname -a Linux ruined 2.6.7-1.437.1.ll.rhfc2.ccrma #1 Thu Jun 17 10:45:42 PDT 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux -wireless-tools-26-4 lsmod ath_pci 33560 0 wlan 50088 2 ath_pci ath_hal 124624 2 ath_pci lspci -v 02:02.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC ( rev 01) Subsystem: Netgear: Unknown device 4900 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 11 Memory at fafe0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2 /sbin/iwconfig ath0 (this is sitting 3 feet from the router) ath0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"ESSID" Nickname:"deleted" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462GHz Access Point: 00:0X:45:69:72:DC Bit Rate:36Mb/s Tx-Power:off Sensitivity=0/3 Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality:56/94 Signal level:-39 dBm Noise level:-95 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 |
From: Sam L. <sa...@er...> - 2004-06-26 06:33:02
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On Jun 25, 2004, at 2:45 PM, Ryan wrote: > /sbin/iwconfig ath0 (this is sitting 3 feet from the router) > ath0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"ESSID" Nickname:"deleted" > Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462GHz Access Point: > 00:0X:45:69:72:DC > Bit Rate:36Mb/s Tx-Power:off Sensitivity=0/3 > Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off > Power Management:off > Link Quality:56/94 Signal level:-39 dBm Noise level:-95 dBm > Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 > Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 You are using 11g. If you're not running the WPA branch (your note didn't say whether you were running HEAD or WPA) then you're probably not negotiating correct parameters on the station. I routinely get 22-23 Mb/s with netperf through an 11g AP using the WPA branch though this high throughput requires a new hal that has yet to go to sourceforge. Sam |
From: Ryan <rya...@co...> - 2004-06-26 15:40:52
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On Sat, 2004-06-26 at 01:33, Sam Leffler wrote: > On Jun 25, 2004, at 2:45 PM, Ryan wrote: > > > /sbin/iwconfig ath0 (this is sitting 3 feet from the router) > > ath0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"ESSID" Nickname:"deleted" > > Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462GHz Access Point: > > 00:0X:45:69:72:DC > > Bit Rate:36Mb/s Tx-Power:off Sensitivity=0/3 > > Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off > > Power Management:off > > Link Quality:56/94 Signal level:-39 dBm Noise level:-95 dBm > > Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 > > Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 > > You are using 11g. If you're not running the WPA branch (your note > didn't say whether you were running HEAD or WPA) then you're probably > not negotiating correct parameters on the station. I routinely get > 22-23 Mb/s with netperf through an 11g AP using the WPA branch though > this high throughput requires a new hal that has yet to go to > sourceforge. > > Sam I'm using the wpa branch now (thanks, I missed it in the madwifi faq). Looking at the wpa_supplicant web site I've discovered that WPA deals with security and authentication. Madwifi is absolutely useless at work were my router is unencrypted, I'm not sure how wpa might affect performance, but I'm sure it's just my lack of understanding (linux is an ongoing lesson). So anyway running the wpa branch things don't seem much better. ath0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"deleted" Nickname:"deleted" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462GHz Access Point: 00:04:1C:22:56:CC Bit Rate:36Mb/s Tx-Power:50 dBm Sensitivity=0/3 Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality:35/94 Signal level:-60 dBm Noise level:-95 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 How much attention should I be paying to the "Link Quality" and "Signal level" fields? During build time I see a TON of the following warnings but I've been ignoring them since the modules build and load fine: *** Warning: "ieee80211_beacon_update" [/usr/src/madwifi/ath/ath_pci.ko] undefined! *** Warning: "ieee80211_aclator_unregister" [/usr/src/madwifi/net80211/wlan_acl.ko] has no CRC! cat ifcfg-ath0 # Unknown vendor|Generic ath_pci device DEVICE=ath0 ONBOOT=yes USERCTL=yes BOOTPROTO=dhcp WIRELESS=yes #KEY=XXXXXXXXXX ESSID=NETGEAR CHANNEL=11 PEERDNS=no TYPE=Unknown IPV6INIT=no Finally, my little gnome wireless link monitor (which seems quite accurate under 2.4.x) never reports more than ~85% signal strength (sitting a few feet from the router) again this is not the case with other driver/kernel combos. Is there anything I can do to further test/improve performance? Thanks a TON for all the help! -ry |
From: Ryan <rya...@co...> - 2004-06-26 15:46:19
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Hi, Is there one? I haven't seen a reference to an IRC channel devoted to madwifi, that's probably on purpose yes? ;-) -ry |
From: Michael R. <mre...@we...> - 2004-06-30 05:17:45
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Ryan wrote: > Is there one? I haven't seen a reference to an IRC channel devoted to > madwifi, that's probably on purpose yes? > ;-) As far as I know there is no IRC channel. But it could be nice to have one... if there are no objections I'd go ahead to register and set it up, either on FreeNode or on OFTC. Bye, Mike |