I have Netgear WG311T wireless PCI adapters (108 mbs) installed in two
systems.
1. Generic 32bit PC (AMD processor) running Fedora 4. The adapter card
was configure with madwifi (ver. 0.9.3)and wireless tools (ver. 29) that
I installed myself.
2. 64 bit Dell Precision T7400 workstation (2 quadcore Intel Xeon
processors) running SL 5.3 (64 bit). The adapter card was configured
with madwifi (ver. 1:0.9.4-15) and wireless tools (ver. 1:28-2.el5) that
came packaged with this SL distribution.
The two systems sit virtually side by side. The wireless speeds I get
for the first system to/from my Netgear wireless router are quite
satisfactory - 20-30 mb/sec. From the 64 bit system, however, speeds
are typically about 10% of that, and the connection is rather
unreliable.
Here is the 'iwconfig' and 'lspci -v' output for the 32 bit system:
#############################################################
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
wifi0 no wireless extensions.
ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"olympic" Nickname:"maple.reachone.com"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point:
00:1B:2F:E3:DF:4A
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:16 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=28/94 Signal level=-67 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
sit0 no wireless extensions.
cipsec0 no wireless extensions.
00:08.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212
802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
Subsystem: Netgear: Unknown device 5a00
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 9
Memory at dffe0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2
#################################################################
And here it is for the 64 bit system:
##################################################################
lo no wireless extensions.
wmaster0 no wireless extensions.
Warning: Driver for device wlan0 recommend version 21 of Wireless
Extension,
but has been compiled with version 20, therefore some driver features
may not be available...
wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"olympic"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point:
00:1B:2F:E3:DF:4A
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B
Link Quality=51/100 Signal level=-62 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
sit0 no wireless extensions.
cipsec0 no wireless extensions.
09:02.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. Atheros AR5001X
+ Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
Subsystem: Netgear Unknown device 5a00
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 82
Memory at f7bf0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2
###########################################################
I am not an expert on wireless networking, but here are my observations
from this comparison.
1. On the 32 bit system iwconfig detects the device as 'ath0' and 'IEEE
802.11g' and 'lspci -v' shows an AR5212 chipset, while on the 64 bit
system it is 'wlan0' and 'IEEE 802.11' and the AR5001X chipset.
However, when I swap the cards the results don't change, i.e. the
results don't depend on which card is installed, but on the systems
themselves. Since the 32 bit results are seem correct, it certainly
look like the 64 bit system is misidentifying the device (Maybe a bios
issue?)
2. The 54 mbs bit rate on the 32 bit system is quite stable, while the
rate on the 64 bit system is quite erratic, varying from 1 to 11 mbs.
3. Although the versions of madwifi and wireless-tools in SL 5.3 should
be more current than I installed on the 32 bit system, the warning about
version mismatch for the 64 bit system suggests otherwise. This I don't
understand.
4. Because I went to the trouble of swapping cards between the two
systems, and it didn't make any difference, I don't think the problem is
in the cards themselves. So, is the problem in the software, i.e. the
SL madwifi and wireless-tools, or in the 64bit hardware?
I would appreciate any suggestions or advice on this problem. I have
considered trying 'ndiswrapper', but haven't had any luck finding a 64
bit Windows driver for this card. Besides, I would prefer not to do
this, since this card is supposed to have native Linux support.
Tom R.
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