[GRLUG] wifi connection drops under Ubuntu

[mailtonick]

What are you using to manage Wireless connections on the Acer? I had a
similar issue with Ubuntu a while ago and with Mint recently. I replaced the
default manager with another. I think it was simply titled "network
manager". I don't have access to the machine now to confirm. I'll hunt it
down to verify if you can't find the package.

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 6:58 PM, John-Thomas Richards <jtr at jrichards.org>wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 06:41:38PM -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 6:19 PM, John-Thomas Richards <jtr at jrichards.org>
> wrote:
> > > I bought an Acer Aspire One for my wife.  It came with Win7 Starter
> > > Edition.  W7SE is a dog.  I installed Ubuntu (full, not Netbook Remix)
> > > on it.  It is much snappier than Win7.  However, wifi does not work as
> > > well under Ubuntu as it does under Win7.  Win7 shows signal strength
> > > around 85% and Ubuntu (NetworkManager) shows it around 42%.  Googling
> > > has revealed that these figures may not be accurate.  I am inclined to
> > > trust them since Win7 never experiences loss of network connectivity
> > > whereas Ubuntu experiences frequent drops.
> >
> > The actual "quality" measurement isn't so simple as a percentage; the
> > driver itself will be reporting a signal strength in dB and a noise
> > strength in dB. Your actual connection quality depends on your
> > signal-to-noise ratio. That "percentage" is going to be some
> > calculation based on those two numbers. If you drop into an xterm and
> > run 'iwconfig (interface)', what does it say?
>
> root at djr-laptop:~# iwconfig wlan0
> wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"boston_celtics"
>          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:18:39:B6:9B:2E
>          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm
>          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:-Off   Fragment thr:-Off
>          Encryption key:ECF6-C681-FC
>          Power Management:-Off
>          Link Quality=26/70  Signal level=-84 dBm
>          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
>          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
>
> > > I disabled power management
> > > on the wifi card (thinking that perhaps Ubuntu is mistakenly reducing
> > > the power to it in an effort to save power).  This does not eliminate
> > > the loss of connectivity.  I am not sure what else to do, but no matter
> > > what, I cannot tell my wife to just boot into Windows.  Any ideas?
> >
> > Watch /var/messages and /var/syslog. There's likely something interesting
> there.
>
> It just lost connection again.  dmesg shows multiple entries of this:
>
> [ 1927.216729] ath9k: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024
> AR_DIAG_SW=0x40000020
>
> > It's also possible that the Aspire One generates more EMI when running
> > Ubuntu's drivers and policies than when running Windows' drivers and
> > policies, based on configuration of the device. It may actually *help*
> > to be more aggressive on power policies for things like your hard disk
> > and CPU speed.
>
> How could Ubuntu's drivers and policies result in more EMI?
> --
> john-thomas
> ------
> A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are
> called
> the games and amusements of mankind.
> Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
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