Belkin F5D6001 (rtl8180): Weak WLAN - Signal

[C. Reis]

In the Intrepid Ibex 8.10 Release Candidate as well as the yesterday released final version of Intrepid Ibex 8.10, the wireless-lan card Belkin F5D6001 shows a very weak signal strength.
While the card works only with the net8180 windows driver and ndiswrapper under Hardy Heron 8.04 with ~80% signal strength, the rtl8180 driver module in 8.10 will recognize the card properly but with a signal strength of only 5 to 10%.
The connection to the router seems to be stable, and I'm getting good DL/UL speeds, so I guess there's something up with the display of the connection quality.
I see a similarity to the following reported bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/275230

If I can provide with further information, please feel free to let me know.

Edit: I confirmed my problem with the final release version of Intrepid.

[C. Reis (reic)]

I found this bug listed in bugzilla: http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11392

Maybe that's the reason for the "weak" signal strength.

[Ben James (something-for-the-pain)]

I can confirm that this also affects the Netgear MA521 PCMCIA card using the rtl8180 chipset - I have excellent reception status using ndiswrapper under Hardy, however see only 5-10% under Intrepid (~3' from the router).

I also note the following, possibly related, symptom with the open source driver in Intrepid; once connected to a wireless network I am no longer able to manually scan for wireless networks using "iwlist scan" (note that I am able to scan before the connection is made).

[diegoe (diegoe-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

I can confirm this bug.
Using the rtl8180 driver with my realtek card (with Philips radio):
   03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8180L 802.11b MAC (rev 20)

I get 5~10% of reported signal, when in reality it's much more. Practical example:
  N800 says "100%"
  Laptop says "13%"

both devices in the exact same spot: just next to the router, 10 centimeters if you want to be specific.

The old pre-upstream-migration driver in rtl-wifi.sf.net reported the correct signal level, the code included in the kernel seems to be completely different, although I understand it was taken from rtl-wifi project in SF.

Ndiswrapper reports a fixed 60~70% of signal, and I honestly don't think that's a real measure. It's probably ndis faking a number so applications don't break.

On a side note, there's a really annoying problem in the kernel driver that causes frequent disconnections after some minutes of network usage. It might be caused by a wrong lecture of the signal level (i.e.: signal = 0 -> drop connections, try to reconnect!).

[Tino Meinen (a-t-meinen)]

Not only is it showing a weak signal, it is now dropping the connection randomly, and when there is a connection, it is extremely inefficient. Pinging the router, it drops about 22% of the packets. Ping times go op to 40 seconds (not milliseconds! but seconds). So there is obviously something fishy going on. Booting into windows, shows it can connect easily and reliably.

This, card seemed to be working reasonably reliably up until a couple of days ago. It would drop the connection once every 4 hours or so, but after reconnection, you would be up to speed again,
I'm going through recent upgrades to see if there is a packet that might be the cause of this.

[Tino Meinen (a-t-meinen)]

The problem I have seem to be described in http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11176 (rtl8180: disconnects randomly after some minutes of use.) thought it suggests that the weak signal reporting might be related.

[papukaija (papukaija)]

Adding the patch from the upstream. Btw, this bug shloud be fixed in maverick.

[Handssolow (handssolow)]

I've got low quality and signal strength here too (14/100) with my new Micronet SP906GK V5 RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller running 10.10 Maverick. So far it's working well enough and I'm not going to compile the edited Realtek RTL8185L driver as suggested by Everthon Valadão in Launchpad Bug #275230. If it were already in Maverick it would have been even better.

[Tino Meinen (a-t-meinen)]

This bug is still present for me in Maverick.
Weak signal and randomly dropping connection, then unable to associate again unless disabling and re-enabling the network through the right click menu in Network Manager applet.

[papukaija (papukaija)]

It's very unlikely that this bug would be fixed in Maverick if the upstream bug is not fixed.

[Tino Meinen (a-t-meinen)]

Very true, but I see you mentioned in comment #11 that upstream has a patch, and that the bug should be fixed in Maverick. What happened with the patch?

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug was filed against a series that is no longer supported and so is being marked as Won't Fix. If this issue still exists in a supported series, please file a new bug.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[jonaternet (jonaternet)]

Hello, I am happy to announce that this bug seems fixed in Ubuntu 12.04 ! Before I used to complile the r8185b.ko module, force it to load at startup with an entry in /etc/modules, and blacklist rtl8180. This worked, but isn't necessery anymore :-)

[jonaternet (jonaternet)]

Not sure if it is fixed for all models, here is mine :
01:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 20)
( the real brand is zyxel )