atheros AR242x works.. but very slow

[fdestcroix]

After many moons and some great help from Scottro and others - no offence intended with misspelling in last thread managed to get my wireless working with Fedora 8.

Just updated to feodra 10 and am thrilled with everything in this newest release. Everything seemed to work with little hassle on my sony laptop. Even all the fn buttons.

But then I noticed that the internet was painfully slow. It seemed to be a name resolution problem. It takes a really long time to connect to a site. With some investigation found out about this bug: bug id=459756

And a fix from http://www.fedorafaq.org/f10/#dns-slow

I implemented this fix but it provided no help.

Checked the wired connection to find that there is no problems with eth0 . able to use yum, ftp, fast ping rate.

Then plugged in my dlink usb wireless. This connected automatically and had no problems and provided decent speeds and not the other problems seen with the built-in wireless card. So it must be the funky er5007 atheros card. (A pain in the butt from day one!)

ath5k is installed and running. Everything is working the way I would expect. It would be fantastic to find a simple fix to this problem.

Either way this is still the best fedora since I fully converted to Linux with FC 6

[mk27]

If you are using a wireless atheros chipset on the 32-bit version you might want to sheck out madwifi, I used it on an FC7 laptop and it's fine.

I'm running FC10/64 now non-wireless and it's like, instantaneous. I think if you have any possibility of running a cable to your router you will be much happier (unless you need your laptop in the bathroom, etc...)

ps. st.croix rocks and I am totally jealous

[fdestcroix]

I used the madwifi driver with the patch for the er5007 chip with my fedora 8. It appears that madwifi is now included in the kernel.

Also network Manager does recognize it with a plain install. It connects but goes very slowly and has a hard time with updates and ftp particularly. The results when I ping my own router is terrible. and results are not constant.

Maybe I should replace the one installed with the kernel with the latest from the madwifi site???

Since I have been travelling more lately the wireless working properly is important. Also recently finished insulating my out-of-home office and need to connect in both my house and the office.

The people I'm working with are pushing me to switch back to MS and it makes me sick to think of it. This needs to be working somehow by my next trip.

[mk27]

Go back to FC7 or whatever has worked for you unless there is some reason to do something else. Later releases may not necessarily be better in all regards.

[scottro]

Some people, though not me, have found that the ath5k driver isn't working all that well for them. Most of them just went back to MadWifi's drivers and had success. So, rather than going back to F7, you might try getting the Madwifi sources, blacklisting ath5k, and using the MadWifi drivers.

There's no guarantee that this will solve it, but it's one thing to try and it isn't all that time-consuming.

By the way, have you checked the card with other distros and/or other O/S's? Sometimes, it can be a hardware or router issue. At one point, I thought I was having an ath5k issue which turned out to be a dying router.

[fdestcroix]

After trying almost everything ...

$ yum install madwifi

solved all my problems.

[pz8]

how you do that?
i have

[root@localhost BioHazard]# yum install madwifi
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
fedora                                                   | 2.8 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-free                                           | 2.7 kB     00:00     
adobe-linux-i386                                         |  951 B     00:00     
updates                                                  | 2.3 kB     00:00     
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
No package madwifi available.
Nothing to do

[robert-e]

pz8
You need to enable the fusion non-free repo. You have only the free one.
Bob

[pz8]

thx robert-e but this dont work for me
with wireless

[BioHazard@localhost ~]$ ping google.com
PING google.com (74.125.45.100) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from yx-in-f100.google.com (74.125.45.100): icmp_seq=1 ttl=237 time=1259 ms
64 bytes from yx-in-f100.google.com (74.125.45.100): icmp_seq=2 ttl=238 time=1935 ms
64 bytes from yx-in-f100.google.com (74.125.45.100): icmp_seq=3 ttl=238 time=1140 ms

without wireless

[BioHazard@localhost ~]$ ping google.com
PING google.com (74.125.67.100) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from gw-in-f100.google.com (74.125.67.100): icmp_seq=1 ttl=237 time=184 ms
64 bytes from gw-in-f100.google.com (74.125.67.100): icmp_seq=2 ttl=236 time=175 ms
64 bytes from gw-in-f100.google.com (74.125.67.100): icmp_seq=3 ttl=237 time=155 ms
64 bytes from gw-in-f100.google.com (74.125.67.100): icmp_seq=4 ttl=234 time=174 ms

when i had F9 the wireless was fast

[robert-e]

Understood, but my reply was to remind you that in order to install madwifi from the repos, you need to have the fusion non-free repo. It appears from your (2nd last) post that you do not have this repo.
I am not saying that installing madwifi will fix your slow speed problem; other factors can cause this; ie. interfering rf signals from other AP, portable telephones, baby monitors are most notorious.
Regards,
Bob