Where can I test out wifi?

Fri Nov 13 11:01:31 UTC 2009

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 11:49 PM, Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 01:37:15PM -0300, Marcelo Cavalcante wrote
>> Well.. What's your OS?
>
>  Gentoo with Fluxbox WM.
>
>> Have any wifi software like wicd, networkmanager, etc.. ?
>
>  Not when I wrote the email... maybe that's why I get...
>
> [aa1][root][/usr/src/linux] iwlist wlan0 scanning
> wlan0     Interface doesn't support scanning : Network is down
>
> [...later...]
>
>  The Knoppix boot key does see 5 wireless networks in my building.  I
> get 5 listings like your "NeuronetZvovo".  That's surprising, since
> Knoppix is using the Ath5k driver and lspci -v says that my netbook has
>
> 03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
>        Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device e00d
>
>  If the Knoppix ethernet driver worked, I'd be very tempted to blow
> away Gentoo on the netbook, and do a hard-disk install of Knoppix.
> Under Gentoo, I emerged ath5k and networkmanager and got...
>
> [aa1][root][~] ln -s /etc/init.d/net.lo /etc/init.d/net.wlan0
> [aa1][root][~] /etc/init.d/net.wlan0 start
>  * Caching service dependencies ...
>  * Starting wlan0
>  *   Configuring wireless network for wlan0
>  *   wlan0 does not support scanning
>  *   You either need to set a preferred_aps list in /etc/conf.d/wireless
>  *      preferred_aps=( "ESSID1" "ESSID2" )
>  *      and set associate_order_wlan0="forcepreferred"
>  *      or set associate_order_wlan0="forcepreferredonly"
>  *   or hardcode the ESSID to "any" and let the driver find an Access Point
>  *      essid_wlan0="any"
>  *   or configure defaulting to Ad-Hoc when Managed fails
>  *      adhoc_essid_wlan0="WLAN"
>  *   or hardcode the ESSID against the interface (not recommended)
>  *      essid_wlan0="ESSID"
>  *   Failed to configure wireless for wlan0
>
>  Anybody have a working /etc/conf.d/wireless they're willing to share
> (minus your passwords, of course <G>).
>
>
> --
> Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>

The MadWifi driver works best for me with my Atheros card:
   Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

I have ath5k working under Ubuntu, but I've had the following issues:

 * When I come home from work and wake-up my laptop. I can see it
connecting/disconnecting from my home WLAN 4 or 5 times before
'settling'. (I highly doubt this is due to outside interference since
it *always* happens with the ath5k driver and I rarely get home at a
regular time -- i.e. I doubt that I just happen to come home when
someone is using a microwave every night)
 * Sometimes this connect/disconnect 'settling' period can be
triggered by moving around in my living room (Note that the AP is in
the *center* of the room, not 5 feet away from anywhere I might sit)
 * When connecting to my media center pc/server, I noticed these
'hangs' where ssh sessions would randomly become unresponsive for 5-10
seconds. These went away when I switched back to using MadWifi.
 * NetworkManager would routinely (sometimes 2 or 3 times in an hour)
spam /var/log/syslog with similar looking messages to these:
   Disconnecting from network (my wlan)
   Connecting to network (null)
   Disconnecting from network (null)
   Connecting to network (my wlan)

I never bothered to see if any of those 'null' connections matched up
with the ssh unresponsiveness, but none of those showed up in any
other way (nm-applet never showed a disconnect/reconnect, and web
browsing didn't seem to slow down).

I've seen people claim throughput differences between Ath5k and
MadWifi (Ath5k being slower), but I never ran tests. I've also seen
these problems blamed on a lack of a good algorithm in Ath5k for
dealing with noise, but I don't buy that as an excuse for my issues
(though it could be the issue with throughput).

The only fault I can put on the MadWifi driver is that it's not
'suspend aware.'  It will hose the wifi chip until a reboot if you try
to s2ram and wake back up. This is easily remedied with:

/etc/pm/config.d/madwifi:
  SUSPEND_MODULES="$SUSPEND_MODULES ath_pci"

(Which on another note I have *no* clue why Ubuntu doesn't make a
default... This has been an issue for *two* releases and I still have
to do that on a fresh install -- though ath5k is now the default
driver for Atheros chips in Ubuntu despite its faults)

To continue an already long email... Since we're on the topic of wifi,
if anyone here uses NetworkManager and has trouble associating with a
network try rebooting with NetworkManager (NetworkManger the
/etc/init.d service, not the interface nm-applet) disabled and using
iwtools/kismet to connect to a network.  I've had this issue at a few
hotels before (both hotels had their wifi provided by the same company
according to their info cards). For whatever reason when trying to
join those networks, if NetworkManager so much as loaded *at all* I
would have to reboot to get the network connection again (just
shutting down NetworkManager was not enough).  No clue why. Most time
it could connect to the network, but DHCP would timeout with various
error messages so I couldn't get an address (and NetworkManager drops
the network association when DHCP fails).  Could have been a poorly
configured network needing some weird MTU settings or something. Could
have been an issue with dhclient. Could have been an issue with
NetworkManager. I was dual-booting at the time and I used some of
network info I gleaned from Windows to try and set NetworkManager up
with a static ip/dns/etc settings, but that didn't work. [Note: I
didn't bother to try wicd at the time]
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