[GRLUG] wifi connection drops under Ubuntu

[Jonathan Jesse]

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 9:11 PM, John-Thomas Richards <jtr at jrichards.org>wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 07:20:38PM -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> > 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
> > >          Link Quality=26/70  Signal level=-84 dBm
> [snip]
> > > [ 1927.216729] ath9k: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024
> AR_DIAG_SW=0x40000020
> >
> > Sounds like the ath9k driver is having problems?
>
> Yes, that was the problem.  I upgraded linux-backports-modules-karmic and
> linux-backports-modules-wireless-karmic-generic.  The netbook is now
> showing ~80% signal strength.
>
> As a bonus I switched to WPA since I realized I posted my WEP key and
> SSID.  :-)
>
> Thanks to all who responded.  It got me thinking and helped to narrow my
> googling.  Here is the thread that helped me:
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1309605&highlight=AR928X
> --
> john-thomas
> ------
> I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding
> because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they
> have not a single political argument left.
> Margaret Thatcher
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Hope it works out for you with your new fix.  By any chance ar eyou using
ATT UVerse for your internet connection?  I had this problem w/ my Ubuntu
laptop and my wife's MacBook?  Turns out the residential gateway was bad, it
was a referub instead of a brand new residential gateway....  and that
solved our disconnets, along w/ moving the baby monitor away from the
gateway
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