Wireless NIC only shows partial power

[bluestrobe]

Wireless NIC: Cisco AIR-CB21AG-A-K9
Driver being used: Atheros Communications AR5212 802.11abg
Using KNetworkManager

Basically I used this card just fine on an XP laptop. I go to use it on my Kubuntu Dell C610 and it shows half the strength. I can hold the laptop right next to the AP and it only shows <60% power and most times its only 50%. On the same card with XP, I'm getting 100% power strength from the same AP. Is this a driver issue or am I seeing something wrong?

 

[bluestrobe]

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[nweaver]

where are you getting the "power" from. The little bars mean nothing, as an FYI. In either OS

 

[bluestrobe]

ok. It was the little bars I am looking at. How would one determine what power they have with any wireless card then?

 

[bluestrobe]

I took the laptop with me on my vacation this week. I could not connect to any open wireless network. It would get to the "configuring IP" and stall out. Also most signal strengths were under 30 on the "bar" but I knew there were more to them. Does this sound common?

 

[drag]

Sounds like there is definately a problem.

Something like the wifi card is unable to set it's speed correctly or something like that. Like your trying to connect and it should be running at 2Mb/s, but it's stuck at 11Mb/s or 54Mb/s. Something like that.

Either that or the driver has some bugs in it or is old or something like that were it's not as efficient as the Windows stuff.

From the command line there are several applications that can help you somewhat figure out what is going on...

ifconfig --look a the configuration of network interfaces
iwconfig --similar to ifconfig, but added support for wireless extensions
iwlist --used to scan for networks.
dmesg --used to see kernel messages (if a driver has a error it will show up there)


For example session for me would be something like:
iwconfig
(to find out which interface it's using, say it's using eth1)
ifconfig eth1
dmesg
dmesg |grep eth1
ifconfig eth1 up
iwlist eth1 scan
iwconfig eth1

and so on and so forth. See the 'man' files for more details.

If trying to configure the wireless stuff manually you'll want to disable network-manager, just so that it stops trying to auto configure your stuff. Take the interface down in the network manager applet, then go

sudo /etc/init.d/network-manager stop

And that should stop it. I am using debian, so it may be slightly different for you.


Do you know what driver are you using? Did you install the madwifi stuff or are you trying to use ndiswrapper?

You may want to take a look through:
http://madwifi.org/
http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/Distro/Ubuntu

 

[Kaervak]

I second using the Madwifi drivers. In my opnion using ndiswrapper should be a last resort. Now the issue with madwifi drivers is Atheros can't open source their HAL due to FCC regulations. So if you're a hardline "no closed source/proprietary software at all" type of guy you're kinda screwed. OpenHAL & OpenHAL, exist but as far as I know isn't fully ported yet. If you're not really concerned about using some closed source software than the regular Madwifi drivers work great. I recommend compiling from source. It's not as hard as you may think. You need the kernel sources for it to work but that's about it. So install the kernel sources, decompress the madwifi archive, from a command line in the madwifi dir type in sudo make && make install && modprobe ath_pci (pretty sure that's the syntax, it's in the install readme anyway) and that's pretty much it. KNetworkManager will pick up the card right away, assuming everything went well. One more thing, I use the KDE kicker applet "Wireless Network Information" to keep tabs on signal strength, noise level and whatnot. It seems pretty accurate to me. Hopefully that helps.

 

[bluestrobe]

The driver I use is in my OP. I use Knetworkmanager and will try the other ones when I get the chance.

 

[drag]

Ya I know that's what you posted in the original post, but the problem is is that I don't know exactly what that means. It's not your fault or mine, it's just kinda retardation on the part of the network-manager front-end.

I expect that your using Madwifi right now. To use Ndiswrapper would of taken extra effort and the openhal probably wouldn't work at all.

I am think that it might have to do with a chance that the Windows driver is just plain better.

Open up a terminal. And just run:

sudo iwconfig

This will help you locate which device is your wireless card. It's the one with the wireless extensions. I expect that it's just ath0, if it's not then change it in the following command:

sudo iwconfig ath0 rate 2

Now try and see if you can find more networks.


(interesting website, btw. I bought a motorcycle a while ago and the previous owner had removed the turn signals (all except for the ones in the tail light) and the reflectors, I was curious about what sort of things I could add on to my bike to make it easier to see but was nervous about the legality of stuff like having a led in a orange reflector.)

 

[bluestrobe]

sorry, it's ath0, I remember that much. At the moment I'm just running stock with whatever Kubuntu came with. I haven't booted it up since I got back on my trip so any of the changes that you guys recommended haven't been touched as of yet. When I have more time I'll boot it up and start playing with it. Thing that sucks at this point is there are no AP's around my neighborhood so it makes testing kind of hard.