D-Link DWL-G650 Notebook Adapter link light blinks

uuklanger · #1 16th December 2007, 06:11 AM

I recently got a D-Link DWL-G650 card.
H/W Ver.: B5
F/W Ver.: 2.54

I installed it into an IBM Thinkpad T30 running FC8. After setting up and configuring madwifi for the 2.6.23.8-63.fc8 kernel version, the card fired up. Everything works just fine, however, there is one odd issue that I cannot determine a cause for.

The card has two light. An activity light (network traffic) and a LINK light (are you connected). Both lights continue to blink every ~1 second unless I am doing file transfers. In that case they both flicker.

According to the documentation, only the Activity light should blink. The LINK light is supposed to be solid unless there is an issue with the connection (LINK). Looking in my log (dmesg and /var/log/message) I do not see any errors. The device fires right up.

Running iwconfig, I get the following...

ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"xxxxxxx" Nickname:"xxxxxxxxx"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s Tx-Power:18 dBm Sensitivity=1/1
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:xxxxxxxxxxxxx Security mode:restricted
Power Management:off
Link Quality=30/70 Signal level=-66 dBm Noise level=-96 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:105993 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

My old 802.11b card worked just fine in the same environment. Something else odd, in the same environment, my old card would have a network % in use of 0% when my system was idle. This new card shows 5-22%. Almost like it is sniffing all packets on my network and all surrounding networks.

Does anyone have a similar situation of knows of a cause why the both light would be
blinking (vs link light on solid, act light blinks while being used)

Christy · #2 16th December 2007, 06:32 PM

They blink all the time and then blink more rapidly when stuff is happening. I can't remember, but I think it acts the same in Windows (don't use it much on my laptop).

uuklanger · #3 17th December 2007, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christy

They blink all the time and then blink more rapidly when stuff is happening. I can't remember, but I think it acts the same in Windows (don't use it much on my laptop).

Christy, thank you for your fast reply. Just to clarify. Do you mean both lights (link and act) blink at the same time? And, at the same rate (sometimes faster when transferring files)?

Christy · #4 18th December 2007, 01:41 AM

Yes, that's what they do. And I just confirmed that they do the same in Windows. So it seems to be the correct behavior.

uuklanger · #5 18th December 2007, 02:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christy

Yes, that's what they do. And I just confirmed that they do the same in Windows. So it seems to be the correct behavior.

Thanks for your help. I especially like the fact that you took the time to confirm it under Windows too. That sets my comfort level. Cool.. well, that confirms it. My card works!