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Networking - wifi + WEP = connection unstable

matteosistisette - 20.11.2007, 20:44 Uhr
Titel: wifi + WEP = connection unstable
Hi,

I've experienced the same problem with FreeSpire and with Sabayon Linux (other distros didn't even get me that far) as well as with Kanotix, so this does not seem to be distro-specific. However, I will give it a try and post it here as well.

I have a laptop and a D-Link DWL-G650 PCMCIA wifi adapter, which has an Atheros AR5212 chipset which is supposed to be well supported in Linux.
I need to connect to a wifi LAN which is WEP-encrypted, and obviously I have the WEP key.
I'm sharing the router with other people, so I don't have administrator access to it, and even if I had, I couldn't change its configuration, channels, disable encryption and that sort of things, 'cause this would disturb other people connecting to the wlan.

I connect to this wlan daily with the same computer and with the same wifi card under Windows, without any problem.
The signal strength is poor, but under Windows I get a FAST and PRETTY STABLE connection, I surf the web, listen to internet radios, download many linux distribution every day (hoping I find one that works), etc.
Only very rarely does the connection fall down, say a couple of times a day, and it reconnects in a few seconds automatically.

Now, under Kanotix live CD, my wifi card is seen and recognized; I get a knetworkmanager tray icon on the right: right click on it, I see a list of available networks, select the desired one, I insert the wep key (and select hexadecimal which is correct), and wait.
A "baloon" message appears on top of the tray icon, with a progress indicator, and it says more or less:
"configuring device", then "IP configuration started",
then one of the following three things can happen:

A - it freezes for quite a long while in "IP configuration started" and finally says "Could not connect to network".
In which case I try again.
Or
B - it freezes for such a long time that I give up and restart it (by clicking on the network name again), so it starts over again
Or
C - It finally reaches 100% and says it is connected (can't remember the exact message), and the tray icon finally shows the signal level (which is quite low as usual).

In case C, if I open a browser, sometimes I can surf the net and see some sites but ONLY FOR A FEW MINUTES OR LESS (also, it is veeeeeery slow, much slower than in windows).
After a few minutes, I cannot open any site at all.

After connecting, if I do a "ping 192.168.1.1" (which is the router) from a terminal, I get a few ping replies, then it starts not to get replies any more, and finally (after a while) I start getting "Destination host unreachable".

However, knetwork manager doesn't say it is disconnected, he keeps showing as connected.

If I manually reconnect, sometimes I can get surfing again for a few more minutes.

Does anybody have a clue of what the heck is going on?

It doesn't seem like an issue with the wifi card drivers, does it?

I haven't had a chance to try it on another network with better signal.
But however poor the signal is, it is strong enough to get a stable and fast connection: the proof is that I get it under Windows. So something is not working properly.

Can anybody suggest what piece of software is most probably not working right? So that I can search for some info in some specific site/forum/wiki/bugtracker.
Is it the kernel? Is it madwifi? Or who?

I'm really desperate. I do want to move to Linux and gradually leave Windows; but I've tried 8 different linux distros, all of which claim they work out-of-the-box, and none gets me connected to the internet (and some of them have ridiculous problems with automatically mounting media). This is a little frustrating.
dptxp - 28.02.2008, 15:04 Uhr
Titel: RE: wifi + WEP = connection unstable
I have had no problem with Ubuntu or sidux. With Kanotix, I have. I have been advised to use WPA, not WEP. But do not see any WPA setup in Windows.
merlin - 28.02.2008, 15:50 Uhr
Titel: RE: wifi + WEP = connection unstable
WEP with madwifi dosn't work properly with knetwork-manager.
You can deinstall that crap and use the kanotix own tool "netcardconfig"
apt get --purge remove network-manager
or install "wicd" it's an other gui that works with atheros and WEP
matteosistisette - 28.02.2008, 16:14 Uhr
Titel: Re: RE: wifi + WEP = connection unstable
merlin hat folgendes geschrieben::
WEP with madwifi dosn't work properly with knetwork-manager.
You can deinstall that crap and use the kanotix own tool "netcardconfig"
apt get --purge remove network-manager
or install "wicd" it's an other gui that works with atheros and WEP


Knetworkmanager is not the problem, it's MADWIFI, at least in my case.
The only way I could get it working was by using ndiswrapper and windows drivers instead of madwifi.
This solved the problem in Ubuntu and in a few other distros, though I didn't try in Kanotix any more.

Madwifi doesn't work well with atheros chipsets, at least with ar5212, so I really don't know why the heck that chipset is included in the list of supported chipsets, and why a lot of distros (which do include ndiswrapper and even some windows drivers and do detect and choose the supposedly best driver on install and automatically choose ndiswrapper for other chipsets) choose madwifi for that chipset!!

At least, this was the situation when I encountered the problem.
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