FC5, ndiswrapper, Dlink DWL-610 unstable work

[timothyha]

Hello,

I have successfully installed my PCMCIA card Dlink DWL-610 to work under FC5, through ndiswrapper and Windows XP drivers. Same installation was working under Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake Flight 6 (beta).

Web browsing seemed to be OK up until some moment when I found posting long messages to forums and CMS (content management systems) would fail or SSH session would hang up after some communication.

Changing to a direct cable connection (eth0) to the Wifi router helped solve all these problems. So I guess the problem is in my ndiswrapper and/or FC5 configuration. Here is the version:

[tim@localhost ~]$ rpm -qi ndiswrapper
Name : ndiswrapper Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version : 1.13 Vendor: (none)
Release : 1.lvn5 Build Date: Sun 09 Apr 2006 02:48:06 PM MSD
Install Date: Tue 09 May 2006 03:00:10 PM MSD Build Host: plague-builder.livna.org

[tim@localhost ~]$ rpm -qi kmod-ndiswrapper
Name : kmod-ndiswrapper Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version : 1.13 Vendor: (none)
Release : 2.2.6.16_1.2111_FC5 Build Date: Sat 06 May 2006 01:39:41 PM MSD
Install Date: Tue 09 May 2006 03:00:11 PM MSD Build Host: plague-builder.livna.org

[timothyha]

Web browsing seemed to be OK up until some moment when I found posting long messages to forums and CMS (content management systems) would fail or SSH session would hang up after some communication.

I am still having these problems. When I connect my computer directly to router, using a LAN cable, it's working OK. But when I work through ndiswrapper + windows driver, I cannot post long messages - they just get broken. I can browse the websites, though.

What do I need to check or fix here?
Thanks for your help.

[ait]

Hi,

I've got the same problem. As long as NIC receives data evertyhing works ok but if I try to send anything longer it stops. Did you get any feedback?

[timothyha]

No, no progress with this. I have installed Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake to compare, and ndiswrapper there was better in treatment of my wifi windows driver. I could upload some 400 mbytes over SSH2 protocol without interruption...
Sorry for Fedora here. I had no problem except Wifi usage under FC5.

[ait]

Switched to Ubunto too - stability of WiFi driver is good enough for me :)
Thanks for the tip (no idea why it works but it works)!

[timothyha]

Well, switching to Ubuntu is a temporary thing for me. There are many things I don't like about Ubuntu. Most of all is the default theme with thin and a little bit ugly fonts - perhaps because of my screen resolution of 1400x1050. Also I am more familiar with configuration of services in Fedora/Redhat. Fedora's syntax is better for me.

What I like about Ubuntu is one and only Synaptic to choose packages from. In Fedora yum in console-based. Puppy (?) is not good. YumEX - not good, too. Of course, I can install Synaptic in Fedora, but it's not by default.

Hey, and Ubuntu has Gnometris by default. I love Tetris :-)

As for WiFi, I am planning to install a miniPCI card in my laptop, it will be Intel PRO/Wireless 2100. My laptop is a Centrino-based thing, but I bought it without Wifi. Now if I use the miniPCI card within the laptop, I can also use native drivers from Intel. If so, I will get back to Fedora again :-)

DWL-610, from what I learned while googling can be replace by DWL-650, which is based on Atheros and supported by madwifi. Madwifi doesn't make use of Windows drivers like ndiswrapper, it seems. Native things are better.

As for Ubuntu - perhaps their kernel uses the same stack size as Windows drivers do, but Fedora's kernel differs. I read something about that, but I am not a kernel/driver professional to confirm this.

[ait]

Hi,

I was using several distros, about 2 years ago I switched to Debian on the workstation (laptop and firewall were Debian always), so Ubuntu in my case is quite good choice.

There's a native driver for DWL-610, but it can do only WEP, no WPA so for time being I'm have to go for ndiswrapper and Windows driver. Maybe Ubuntu has a newer version of ndiswrapper comparing to Debian or slightly different patches to Kernel that did the trick...

Anyway - thanks for it.