signal strength is fluctuating heavily

[melinate]

Binary package hint: network-manager

I have had Feisty installed on my Toshiba Tecra M2 for more than a month. The built in Intel Pro Wireless 2200 has worked perfectly up until about 4/11/2007. Now when I try to connect to my wireless network the signal strength identified by NetworkManger constantly fluctuates from anywhere between 0%-90%. And the connection drops completely about every 10 minutes.

Today I updated to the 2.6.20-15 kernel and I'm not sure what other updates I did just before the problem occurred, but I'm pretty certain I have not installed any new applications or changed any configurations.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Can you please attach /var/log/dpkg.log? That will show us which packages you updated. I suspect it was the kernel update, since it sounds like a driver specific problem.

If you enter 'iwconfig' on the console, you will see the same signal strength in a textual form. I assume it fluctuates there as well?

[karin meyer (kmeyer)]

I have encountered a similar problem; installed kubuntu 7.04 from live CD on 14/4 & implemented all updates available.
wireless card (Intel mini PCI 2100; dell D600) worked fine.
installed further updates available (including a kernel update) on 15/4; now wireless connection kept dropping
out just about immediately after connection; tried several times & have gone back to using my ethernet cable for now.

[melinate (nathan-melinate)]

As you suspected, 'iwconfig ' does fluctuate similarly to Network Manager applet. Attached is the requested log file.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

if the iwconfig output fluctuates as well, this is either a physical problem with your WiFi or a bug in the driver. Can you verify that it's not the former? E. g. by changing your position to the access point, or trying it in Windows or so?

[melinate (nathan-melinate)]

I have a second laptop running windows. When I sit down with both of them in the same location, the Windows laptop stays consistent at about 80-85% signal strength, while the Ubuntu laptop fluctuates and drops connection every 10-30 minutes. I also tried using the wireless on the Ubuntu laptop while sitting 3 feet away from the access point with the exact same results. The last reason that I believe this is a bug rather than an environmental issue is that this is a new occurrence as of approximately 4/11/2007. Prior to that the wireless connection on my Ubuntu laptop worked flawlessly. I suspect I performed an update at that time, but I cannot recall what was updated.

[karin meyer (kmeyer)]

Martin Pitt wrote:
> if the iwconfig output fluctuates as well, this is either a physical
> problem with your WiFi or a bug in the driver. Can you verify that it's
> not the former? E. g. by changing your position to the access point, or
> trying it in Windows or so?
>
> ** Summary changed:
>
> - wireless network connection goes in and out
> + signal strength is fluctuating heavily
>
> ** Changed in: linux-source-2.6.20 (Ubuntu)
> Sourcepackagename: network-manager => linux-source-2.6.20
>
I don't think it's a physical problem :
a) I am sitting a few meters away from the access point
b) my laptop is a dual boot - I've never had problems
    using the wireless card under windows XP
c) my partner was using his windows XP laptop at
    the same time w/out problems

--
Karin Meyer, Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit, University of New England,
Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia; <email address hidden>
WOMBAT homepage : http://agbu.une.edu.au/~kmeyer/wombat.html

[melinate (nathan-melinate)]

Update on my situation. I have no explanation as to why, but now I cannot reproduce the symptoms that triggered this bug report. I will post again if the symptoms return, but the past two days the signal strength has only fluctuated within the normal range [+/- 5%].

[Philipp Kohlbecher (xt28)]

All of a sudden I am seeing this problem now. It wasn't there yesterday and I haven't changed my configuration since then. The last update, according to /var/log/dpkg.log, was mozilla-thunderbird three days ago.

I am sitting right next to the wireless router.

I am using feisty with Linux 2.6.20-16-generic (uname -r). My laptop is a Samsung X20 XVM 1730 V with an Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection (rev 05), according to lspci. It uses the ipw2200 driver. The WiFi network uses WPA2 encryption.

Please let me know how I can help fix this bug.

[Philipp Kohlbecher (xt28)]

This may be purely coincidental, but the wired interface is now configured as well, even though no cable has been plugged in there since bootup. It has an IP address (in the 192.168.0.0/24 range, not in the avahi 169.254.0.0/24 range) and is set as a default route (in addition to a default route through the wireless interface). I don't think I have seen this before, but I am not completely certain. (And, again, this may be completely unrelated.)

[Philipp Kohlbecher (xt28)]

This bug looks somewhat similar to bug #92629.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux-source-2.6.20 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]