Atheros WLAN (MadWifi) poor signal strength

[Christiansen]

Struggling with poor signal stregnth on my Thinkpad R60 with a builtin Atheros WLAN adapter running Kubuntu edgy with kernel 2.6.17-10.33 - kernels before 10.33 has also been tested. Running Kubuntu edgy on other Thinkpads with Intel 2200BG WLAN adapter works perfect, high signal strength, and high performance on both different Cisco and Netgear APs (newest FW). Cisco APs seems to perform a little better than Netgear, but the overall performance is nearly unusable on both.

Tried to adjust various parameters according to instructions found on the madwifi.org site, but nothing seems to make signal strength better.

I would gladly provide any additionally info needed to solve this issue.

[Stephen Eisenhauer (bhspitmonkey)]

Same here.

NIC:
Belkin F5D7000 ver. 5100

AP:
Linksys WRT54G

NIC was installed automatically as ath0 by madwifi, within Edgy. Network Manager (applet) shows a mere one bar of strength (14% and less), whereas my laptop always shows all four bars. Right now my connection speed says 2Mb/s. (ack! I paid for 54! ;)

Both the router and NIC are 802.11b/g, though my initial suspicion is that the card is operating in b mode for some reason. Note that the card works fine, at full capacity, under XP on the same box... unfortunately, I can't just use XP instead, that's not a fair trade-off.

[element (element)]

I have this same problem.

Machine is an IBM T40, tried two separate mini-pci wifi cards (both atheros) one 802.11a/b and one a/g. Even when I get right next to the router, I get around 60 percent signal whereas another computer acorss the room gets 92 percent or higher.

Tried with 2 routers, WRT54G and a DI524

This is ubuntu edgy. I have tried turning off power management and so forth. For connecting I use networkmanager though iwconfig also seems to indicate very low signal.

[Amtsleiter (paul-hoppe)]

Same problem here with a T41p and atheros b/g mini-PCI card. Router is a netgear FM114P.
Using edgy with network manager applet. With windows I have above 80% in all rooms...with edgy barely 15% in other rooms and 60% right next to the router.

[element (element)]

Small comment.

I am not sure if this is true of the ubuntu package, but I hear the signal strength in the madwifi driver is "out of 62" as opposed to out of 100 so when network manager reports 60 that is close to 100 percent.

A patch was proposed to fix this just for the madwifi cards but as far as I know it was not included within the official network manager source, but instead left to individual distributions to apply it if they want to. I found the discussion on the mailing lists about this (patch written by robert love).

However, the issue I experience is actual low signal even taking into account this "bug" with madwifi reporting.

[abanu (capsunel)]

Hi!

I can confirm both problems listed above.

Hardware (Thinkpad T42):
Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

The problems are:

[1] - actual strength
Having the issue [2] as described below I am also sure that the strength of the link is deteriorated in Edgy. Sometimes I get 2% signal or something similar on a pretty stable AP, which never happened in Dapper, and which is back to normal after reboot. Sure enough, because of this I am often disconnected, and sometimes it is impossible to reconnect until reboot.

[2] - reporting
As in the comment above I have observed that the signal strength is reported differently in Edgy. I have been using an AP for some time now and I used to get 46-50% in Dapper. In Edgy I get exactly *half* of that, i.e. 23-25%. So there is definitely a problem with the reporting.

Ready to roll any experiment on my side if needed.

[Aleksander Blomskøld (aleksabl)]

Me and a couple of other guys on the forum are having the same problem. Check out the: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1997291

[Greg Detre (greg-gregdetre)]

I'm running Kubuntu Edgy on a Thinkpad T40. As above, Network Manager reports abnormally low signal strength, and drops the connection at odd intervals. It seems to happen more on some APs than others (possibly depending on signal strength).

Are there any straighforward workarounds that I can consider for now, besides recompiling with Robert Love's madwifi patch? And are there any plans to fix this in Feisty Fawn? Cross fingers... :)

[Mirco Briosi (mail-miobio)]

I'm experiencing the same problem...

(straight from lspci)

"Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)"

I am currently using the ndiswrapper as a workaround...

[Albrecht Mühlenschulte (a7p)]

Same here @ my X40 Thinkpad with feisty - iirc the problem appears since edgy.
02:02.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

[realyst (realyst)]

Found this thread on Google. Not using Ubuntu but rather Fedora Core 6 with newest madwifi.org driver for atheros chipset on a D-Link DWL-G650, same problem

It doesn't seem to be a problem with Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora. It seems like it may be a problem with either the Network Manager or Madwifi driver itself.

Hope that helps.

[realyst (realyst)]

Sorry, shoulda said I was using a Thinkpad T-22.

[Nick Spacek (nick.spacek)]

I've had the same problem. I originally installed Ubuntu 6.10, and the connection was flaky, going in and out. It's still the same after upgrading to 7.04. I have updated as of today, and continue to have the same issues. The signal strength is always reported really low. I was running Windows a while ago and I didn't have these issues.

[Guille (linuxcompiler)]

Still the same problem with 2.6.20-15-generic, and new problem with NetworkManager (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-restricted-modules-2.6.20/+bug/105637)

[Aleksander Blomskøld (aleksabl)]

Yes, I can also confirm that this problem still exists with 2.6.20-15-generic.

[ThinkBuntu (thomasmallen)]

I've experienced the same bug in Debian Etch & Lenny, Arch, Zenwalk, MEPIS, Mint, Sabayon, and other distros. It's clearly a Madwifi problem.

[pearlbear (maxwell-b-pearl)]

I can can confirm that this problem is still occurring on the 2.6.20-16-generic kernel. I'm using Kubuntu 7.04 (Fiesty)

[Marco Carvalho (marco-carvalho)]

I have Toshiba notebook and my girlfriend a Accer.. Both are windows box. My desktop computer are linux box with DWL-G650 (Atheros chipset AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)). I use my linux to route internet to notebooks. I have a DSL cable provided by TV company.

My problem is that only mode i can get is managed and I need ad-hoc. I had explained it in https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/12809 and had reported a bug, but i don't know the number.

My work around is booting in kernel 2.6.15-27-386 that is the last kernel that wireless network worked perfectly. I had tested all the past kernels and ALL have the sabe bug with atheros madwifi driver. My next try is ndiswrapper...

I'll tell you soon what happens...