AR2424 speed issue.

AR2424 speed issue.

[Thomas Fjellstrom]

I just got a new laptop with an Atheros 2424 based wifi card (lspci says 
AR242x, but the pci device id is: 0035).

While it seems to be stable, it is quite slow for 802.11g. The maximum speed I 
can get out of the ath5k driver is the speed it auto connects at: 36Mb/s. If I 
force it to anything higher, nothing can get through (the actual connection 
seems to stay up till some form of very long time out happens).

I just tried the madwifi drivers on madwifi's website (latest trunk snapshot, 
and svn trunk itself) and It auto connects at 18Mb/s. If I up the rate to 
54Mb/s the connection stays up, but it doesn't really seem to be transferring 
any faster.

For comparison's sake I tried it out in Windows 7. It auto connects at 54Mb/s 
and can stream 1080p h264 without stuttering. In linux however, many SD or 
lower res Xvid won't play without stuttering. 720p and 1080p are unwatchable.

What can be done about this? Is there some setting I'm overlooking? Its quite 
annoying to have to reboot into windows to watch some videos.

-- 
Thomas Fjellstrom
tfjellstrom@shaw.ca

Re: AR2424 speed issue.

[Maxim Levitsky]

On Fri, 2009-06-12 at 20:06 -0600, Thomas Fjellstrom wrote:
> I just got a new laptop with an Atheros 2424 based wifi card (lspci says 
> AR242x, but the pci device id is: 0035).
> 
> While it seems to be stable, it is quite slow for 802.11g. The maximum speed I 
> can get out of the ath5k driver is the speed it auto connects at: 36Mb/s. If I 
> force it to anything higher, nothing can get through (the actual connection 
> seems to stay up till some form of very long time out happens).
> 
> I just tried the madwifi drivers on madwifi's website (latest trunk snapshot, 
> and svn trunk itself) and It auto connects at 18Mb/s. If I up the rate to 
> 54Mb/s the connection stays up, but it doesn't really seem to be transferring 
> any faster.
> 
> For comparison's sake I tried it out in Windows 7. It auto connects at 54Mb/s 
> and can stream 1080p h264 without stuttering. In linux however, many SD or 
> lower res Xvid won't play without stuttering. 720p and 1080p are unwatchable.
> 
> What can be done about this? Is there some setting I'm overlooking? Its quite 
> annoying to have to reboot into windows to watch some videos.
> 

You probably have AR2425. Aspire one?

I have tried madwifi too (and unfortunaly found out that this driver
isn't any better in regard to transfer speeds) and stability.

Bob Copeland, recently, wrote patches that make the card set TX power
properly, maybe you need to update kernel to take advantage of that?

But here on my aspire one ath5k gives 54M speeds, but very often
transfers stall, I will attempt soon to figure out what is wrong.

Best regards,
	Maxim Levitsky 

Re: AR2424 speed issue.

[Thomas Fjellstrom]

On Thu June 18 2009, Maxim Levitsky wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-06-12 at 20:06 -0600, Thomas Fjellstrom wrote:
> > I just got a new laptop with an Atheros 2424 based wifi card (lspci says
> > AR242x, but the pci device id is: 0035).
> >
> > While it seems to be stable, it is quite slow for 802.11g. The maximum
> > speed I can get out of the ath5k driver is the speed it auto connects at:
> > 36Mb/s. If I force it to anything higher, nothing can get through (the
> > actual connection seems to stay up till some form of very long time out
> > happens).
> >
> > I just tried the madwifi drivers on madwifi's website (latest trunk
> > snapshot, and svn trunk itself) and It auto connects at 18Mb/s. If I up
> > the rate to 54Mb/s the connection stays up, but it doesn't really seem to
> > be transferring any faster.
> >
> > For comparison's sake I tried it out in Windows 7. It auto connects at
> > 54Mb/s and can stream 1080p h264 without stuttering. In linux however,
> > many SD or lower res Xvid won't play without stuttering. 720p and 1080p
> > are unwatchable.
> >
> > What can be done about this? Is there some setting I'm overlooking? Its
> > quite annoying to have to reboot into windows to watch some videos.
>
> You probably have AR2425. Aspire one?

It is an AR2425, but its a Lenovo "ThinkPad" SL500 (based on the IdeaPad stuff 
it seems :()

> I have tried madwifi too (and unfortunaly found out that this driver
> isn't any better in regard to transfer speeds) and stability.
>
> Bob Copeland, recently, wrote patches that make the card set TX power
> properly, maybe you need to update kernel to take advantage of that?
>
> But here on my aspire one ath5k gives 54M speeds, but very often
> transfers stall, I will attempt soon to figure out what is wrong.

For some reason things seem to have automagically fixed themselves. After a 
little while it started to connect at 54Mb all by itself, and things are 
working.

Initially it didn't want to work right with any driver, but now it does, at 
least with ath5k (not sure if its git or from 2.6.29 tbh, I had git installed 
at one point, but I have absolutely no idea if apt has overwritten it or not 
by now).

> Best regards,
> 	Maxim Levitsky
>
>
>
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-- 
Thomas Fjellstrom
tfjellstrom@shaw.ca

Re: AR2424 speed issue.

[Maxim Levitsky]

On Thu, 2009-06-18 at 17:46 -0600, Thomas Fjellstrom wrote:
> On Thu June 18 2009, Maxim Levitsky wrote:
> > On Fri, 2009-06-12 at 20:06 -0600, Thomas Fjellstrom wrote:
> > > I just got a new laptop with an Atheros 2424 based wifi card (lspci says
> > > AR242x, but the pci device id is: 0035).
> > >
> > > While it seems to be stable, it is quite slow for 802.11g. The maximum
> > > speed I can get out of the ath5k driver is the speed it auto connects at:
> > > 36Mb/s. If I force it to anything higher, nothing can get through (the
> > > actual connection seems to stay up till some form of very long time out
> > > happens).
> > >
> > > I just tried the madwifi drivers on madwifi's website (latest trunk
> > > snapshot, and svn trunk itself) and It auto connects at 18Mb/s. If I up
> > > the rate to 54Mb/s the connection stays up, but it doesn't really seem to
> > > be transferring any faster.
> > >
> > > For comparison's sake I tried it out in Windows 7. It auto connects at
> > > 54Mb/s and can stream 1080p h264 without stuttering. In linux however,
> > > many SD or lower res Xvid won't play without stuttering. 720p and 1080p
> > > are unwatchable.
> > >
> > > What can be done about this? Is there some setting I'm overlooking? Its
> > > quite annoying to have to reboot into windows to watch some videos.
> >
> > You probably have AR2425. Aspire one?
> 
> It is an AR2425, but its a Lenovo "ThinkPad" SL500 (based on the IdeaPad stuff 
> it seems :()
> 
> > I have tried madwifi too (and unfortunaly found out that this driver
> > isn't any better in regard to transfer speeds) and stability.
> >
> > Bob Copeland, recently, wrote patches that make the card set TX power
> > properly, maybe you need to update kernel to take advantage of that?
> >
> > But here on my aspire one ath5k gives 54M speeds, but very often
> > transfers stall, I will attempt soon to figure out what is wrong.
> 
> For some reason things seem to have automagically fixed themselves. After a 
> little while it started to connect at 54Mb all by itself, and things are 
> working.
> 
> Initially it didn't want to work right with any driver, but now it does, at 
> least with ath5k (not sure if its git or from 2.6.29 tbh, I had git installed 
> at one point, but I have absolutely no idea if apt has overwritten it or not 
> by now).

Very nice, I am just curios, what happens if you load the card with
heavy transfer, like iperf of something like that, does it stall for
extended periods of time (like 20 seconds or so)?



Best regards,
 	Maxim Levitsky

Re: AR2424 speed issue.

[Bob Copeland]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 7:34 PM, Maxim Levitsky<maximlevitsky@gmail.com> wrote:
> Bob Copeland, recently, wrote patches that make the card set TX power
> properly, maybe you need to update kernel to take advantage of that?

Nick and Felix did that; I can only take credit for any bugs in the
regulatory portion :)

-- 
Bob Copeland %% www.bobcopeland.com