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Subject2.6 much worse than 2.4 on poor wlan reception
Hi,

I have big problems with kernel 2.6 and WLAN. Quite often the connection
interrupts completely, I can't transfer anything for minutes - making
2.6 unusable for me :-(
I'm only about 5 meters away from my AP, but unfortunately there's a
celeiling between me and the AP to the reception is poor.

My hardware is a SMC 2632 PCMCIA card (802.11b) in a IBM Thinkpad A30
and a SMC AP.

lspci:
02:00.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 80)
02:00.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 80)

blade:~# cardctl ident
Socket 0:
no product info available
Socket 1:
product info: "SMC", "SMC2632W", "Version 01.02", ""
manfid: 0x0156, 0x0002
function: 6 (network)

The wireless-tools have version 26+27pre10-3, pcmcia-cs has 3.2.5, both
from Debian Sid. I have tried kernels 2.6.0, .1 and .2.
Every kernel 2.4 I've had running until now worked very well.

-----------------------------------------------------------
2.4.20:

blade:~# iwconfig eth1
eth1 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"WLAN" Nickname:"Prism I"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412GHz Access Point:00:60:B3:17:F8:8C
Bit Rate:11Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Sensitivity:1/3
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:[ secret ] Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality:1/92 Signal level:-101 dBm Noise level:-149 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:661 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:2751 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

lsmod:
orinoco_cs 4776 1
orinoco 32068 0 [orinoco_cs]
hermes 6244 0 [orinoco_cs orinoco]
ds 7060 2 [orinoco_cs]
yenta_socket 10080 2
pcmcia_core 44928 0 [orinoco_cs ds yenta_socket]

tmm@blade:~$ netio -u 10.0.0.15
NETIO - Network Throughput Benchmark, Version 1.21
(C) 1997-2003 Kai Uwe Rommel

UDP connection established.
Packet size 1k bytes: 557 KByte/s (0%) Tx, 261 KByte/s (73%) Rx.
Packet size 2k bytes: 553 KByte/s (0%) Tx, 89 KByte/s (90%) Rx.
Packet size 4k bytes: 626 KByte/s (0%) Tx, 61444 Byte/s (92%) Rx.
Packet size 8k bytes: 517 KByte/s (2%) Tx, 13393 Byte/s (98%) Rx.
Packet size 16k bytes: 565 KByte/s (3%) Tx, 10924 Byte/s (98%) Rx.
Packet size 32k bytes: 565 KByte/s (3%) Tx, 13787 Byte/s (98%) Rx.
Done.

-----------------------------------------------------------
2.6.2:

blade:~# iwconfig eth1
eth1 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"WLAN" Nickname:"Prism I"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412GHz Access Point:00:60:B3:17:F8:8C
Bit Rate:11Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Sensitivity:1/3
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:[ secret ] Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality:1/92 Signal level:-101 dBm Noise level:-149 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

orinoco_cs 9192 1
orinoco 43980 1 orinoco_cs
hermes 8512 2 orinoco_cs,orinoco
ds 15940 5 orinoco_cs
i82365 20876 1
pcmcia_core 71456 3 orinoco_cs,ds,i82365

tmm@blade:~$ netio -u 10.0.0.15

NETIO - Network Throughput Benchmark, Version 1.21
(C) 1997-2003 Kai Uwe Rommel

UDP connection established.
Packet size 1k bytes: 289 KByte/s (99%) Tx, 223 KByte/s (75%) Rx.
Packet size 2k bytes: 0 Byte/s (100%) Tx, 21 KByte/s (91%) Rx.
Packet size 4k bytes: 440 KByte/s (99%) Tx, 61333 Byte/s (94%) Rx.
Packet size 8k bytes: 382 KByte/s (96%) Tx, 14438 Byte/s (98%) Rx.
Packet size 16k bytes: 369 KByte/s (96%) Tx, 2365 Byte/s (98%) Rx.
Packet size 32k bytes: 239 KByte/s (98%) Tx, 3005 Byte/s (98%) Rx.
Done.

There was a break when netio transfered the 2k blocks.

My log is full of entries like this one:
Mar 1 17:54:12 blade kernel: eth1: New link status: AP Out of Range
(0004)
Mar 1 17:54:12 blade kernel: eth1: New link status: AP In Range (0005)
Mar 1 17:54:16 blade kernel: eth1: New link status: AP Out of Range
(0004)
Mar 1 17:54:16 blade kernel: eth1: New link status: AP In Range (0005)
Mar 1 17:54:19 blade kernel: eth1: New link status: AP Out of Range
(0004)
Mar 1 17:54:20 blade kernel: eth1: New link status: AP In Range (0005)
Mar 1 17:54:22 blade kernel: eth1: New link status: AP Out of Range
(0004)

Kernel 2.4 works far better in the poor reception situation I have,
anyone any idea what I could do without moving the AP or laptop?
When I'm near my AP everything works fine with 2.6 too.

BTW: removing the PCMCIA card when it's in use freezes my system
completely, that was no problem with 2.4.

Thanks a lot!


--
Thomas Mueller - http://www.tmueller.com for pgp key (95702B3B)
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