Comment 24 for bug 276508

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Christiansen (happylinux) wrote : Re: [intrepid] [Atheros AR5211] ath5k driver inoperative, wpa_supplicant never completes connection

I can confirm that this still is an issue with ath5k in Jaunty (kernel 2.6.28-15-generic) as well as in Karmic alpha 5 (kernel 2.6.31-9-generic).
In Jaunty the madwifi driver is the only usable solution, but still have the issue that Tx-Power defaults to 8 dBm, making it unreliable on longer distances from the AP (it can be forced to 20 dBm her in EU, but is falls back 8 dBm after a short while idling/low bandwidth usage).

I've bin investigating the issue since the Jaunty alphas, as the open ath5k has been reported working with a lot of hardware lately. Besides some ThinkPads with the ThinkPad 11a/b/g Wireless LAN Mini Express Adapter, I have access to a Netgear WG511T and a Cisco AIR-CB21AG-E-K9 both PCMCIA adapters both with Atheros 521x chipsets. For the tests I've been using a Cisco box with a Atheros 521x based B/G radio as AP, configured with either WPA-TKIP or RSN-CCMP (not at the same time though) and not broadcasting (hidden network SSID).

A ThinkPad was installed with the released Kubuntu Jaunty, and the internal ThinkPad 11a/b/g Wireless LAN Mini Express Adapter was used. I rear cases it was posible to connect, but speed and reliability was unusable. Without reinstalling, the internal adapter was disabled in BIOS and the computer was booted with the Netgear adapter inserted. This time connection was established right away and automatically on every subsequent reboot, and the connection was reliable and bandwidth as high as expected (and seen with madwifi). Changed the card to the Cisco PCMCIA adapter, and the excact same pattern as experience with the internal Thinkpad adapter was repeated - unreliable and low or no bandwidth.

The tests above was alle repeated with the Karmic Alpha 5 i386 LiveCD, an the pattern was excactly the same here two - the ThinkPad 11a/b/g Wireless LAN Mini Express Adapter and the Cisco AIR-CB21AG-E-K9 PCMCIA adapters was not usable.
BTW Karmic have too been installed on this Thinkpad as dual-boot since Alpha 3 - and between Alpha 3 and Alpha 5 the internal adapter has been nearly usable for a short while while kernel 2.6.31-6 or 2.6.31-7 and network-manager 7.1 was used - unfurtunaly I can't recreate this configuration again.

Attached textfile with excact harware id's and dmesg info for all 3 adapters.