Wireless Issues

I have an ASUS WL-520gU router. I started to have some problems with it on all my machines. I put Tomato on it, which seems to have solved the issues with my Windows desktop and notebooks, but my linux box still seems to be having issues. First off, the connection is slow. I have a 3MB connection, but my Linux box is only hitting a .5MB. This is my HTPC box, which I'd like to watch Hulu and the like on, so this is a problem. It is also periodically dropping the connection. It does seem better of late, but it's still not where I'd like it to be. I've got a Linksys WUSB54G, which has worked out of the box since Karmic, if that makes a difference. I'm not sure if it's the router or the Lucid Lynx upgrade that's done me in. Anyone got any pointers to fix this or Perhaps can suggest a card that works well with Lucid Lynx? Thanks for any help.

 

Hi ZaZ,
let me ask, just out of curiosity and because i like to learn new things ... .
What do you mean by 'put tomato' on your router? I suppose in this case it's not that red vegetable, but some kind of router OS based on what? linux? bsd?
Anyway have you tried to analyse your wifi traffic on linux boxes eg with tcpdump?

 

Tomato is a router firmware, which supposedly makes routers better. It's supposed to make poor routers better. I just tried cause it on mine because it was having issues, which it seems to have fixed except for my Linux box.

I'm not familiar with tcpdump. I've been playing around with Linux for about five years now, but I'm still a newb when it comes to Linux. It works great for my HTPCs as I don't need much from them. Thanks for the reply.

 

Here is e.g nice video on howto use tcpdump in basic
IT Dojo: Analyze network traffic with tcpdump | Online videos for busy IT professionals | TechRepublic Video

 

Could be powersaving mode. Try sudo ifwconfig wlan0 and see if Power Management is on or off. If power saving is on you can turn it off by sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off. You can also tweak with the transmit power and the sensitivity. For that you'll have to check your card's specs and read the iwconfig manpage...

 

Thanks for the replies. My power management is off. I don't get how tcdump helps me fix my slow connection.

 

Maybe try DD-WRT? That's what I have on my router. As for tcpdump you would use it to see if there's anything wrong by analyzing each individual packet...I'm just messing with you, I have no clue as to what tcpdump does.

 

Nice example of wifi connection problem, where they used the tcpdump as part of solution:
Debugging WiFi LG #135

 

Does DD-WRT work on the Asus and will tcdump tell me why my connection is so slow? I'm running out of ideas here. I tried posting over in the Ubuntu forums, but got lost in the sea. Thanks for the help so far.

 

Perhaps we could go at this another way, is there a WiFi card that's known to work well with Lucid Lynx? I don't mind spending a bit of money if it gets it to work.

 

Yes, and yes. Asus WL-520GU - DD-WRT Wiki

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessCardsSupported

 

What chipset (broadcom, Atheros) is in the wireless card of the Linux machine?

How are you testing speed?

 

How do I find out which chip it is? It's a Linksys WUSB54G?

 

Then it's a Broadcom chipset. It's most likely actually the wireless card rather than the router. You can compile the driver for the card and it'll work. Ubuntu Forums - Search Results

 

That may very well be true, but it worked quite well in Karmic, but now has issues, which I don't understand.

 

Hi ZaZ,
the problem you describe is hard to pinpoint, since you don't give enough info about it. Let me summarize it so far:

1. router after OS upgrade works better with windows clients + linux clients performance is also better but far from perfect

2. your linux client runs latest ubuntu 10.04
3. you sas you didn't have this problems with linux clients on 9.04
4. signal strength is same on windows and linux

my Q:
1. do you have only one linux box to test your router with? or there is more linux boxes with this network performance issue?
2. have u tried to e.g. use live cd of some other distro to see if it's distro related problem of latest ubuntu or not?
3. have you tried to install on problematic box windows to test it to see if the problem on the same box is linux related (similar to Q 2)
4.have you tried to run tcpdump command to see if your kernel is processing all packets and not dropping some? - if drops - what does it says?
5. how about basics? - ping command drops some packets?
6. what type of wifi chip (exactly) you have and what firmware do you use for it - is it proprietary firmware or some kind of free e.g. reverse-engineered one?
7. is it possible on your router to log events? (some routers can does) if it's possible have you tried to look to the router logs?
Give us some more info and we might come up with some genius idea (or mayb not)

 

Thanks helikaon. I fired up the Live CD on my X200. The internet worked perfectly, which makes me think the router is good. I wonder if I should just re-install it. Perhaps something got messed up along the way. Karmic never had any issues with the card, which makes me wonder why Lucid does? It doesn't take me long to do as I don't put much on there except VLC.

 

Hi ZaZ,
at least two things we're sure about now:
- your router OS upgrade is OK
- problem is related to the Ubuntu distribution

If you say, reinstall isn't problem, go for it, its fast and see what happens afterwards.
Anyway, i'd like to know which kernel driver the Ubuntu uses for your wifi.
Can You post?
the :
dmesg | grep -i wifi
dmesg | grep -i firmware
lspci | grep -i wireless
should tell us more

gl&hf

 

I'd be happy to post, but I'm not sure how to get it?

 

My bad, the search went stale. Here. linksys wusb54g site:ubuntuforums.org - Google Search

 

I reinstalled Lucid. It seems to be doing much better. I'm running update right now to see if one of those was what messed it up.



Edit: A new problem has come up. I did the system update and my connection still seems to be working properly, but Lucid asked me to install the restricted drivers for my ATI GPU. Everything seemed to go OK, but now my monitor doesn't fill the screen. Anyone know how to scale the monitor so it fills the screen?

 

Hi ZaZ,
just (in your case) use the 'sudo' command, since you need the root priviledge at least for the 'lspci' command.
Copy and paste the output here.

I'm glad the reinstall worked.

As for the screen resolution problem:
your setting of resolution in the xorg.conf is not in accord with the screen resolution capability of your computer screen.

If you installed proprietary driver, it should come together with some gui utility (aticonfig??) to let you manage the resolution.
If no gui tool, then edit screen resolution with help of some OS tools, or edit directly your 'xorg.conf' file.

What is your native resolution on your lappy?

Maybe some *buntu addict could step in here and point out some tools to edit screen resolution in *buntu. ).

gl&hf

 

The resolution is set correctly to 1920x1080, but the image does not fill the screen. When I had Windows on there I could use the GPU software to scale the image larger to fill the screen, but I am unsure how to do that in Linux.

 

Hi ZaZ,
what lappy we talk about - just curious, since that resolution is really good for notebooks...
Just to clarify things - do we talk here about screen resolution or about some picture you wanna use as background?
cya ..

 

We're talking about the resolution. The image the card is outputing onto the screen is not filling it. Someone over on the Ubuntu forums suggested I try the ATI proprietary drive, which I'm going to do.