(solved) Poor Wireless Performance

O11Y · 2012-05-27 09:58:13

Hi There,

I have been using Crunchbang on my Aspire One netbook for the past few months and I'm really impressed with it so far, it's a great linux dist. The problem I have is that although my wireless card connects to my wireless flawlessly, the performance is very choppy and the connection often freezes for a few seconds before resuming whatever it was doing.

I'm a complete linux noob but I did some googling and tried a few things but with no success. The driver it seems to be using is ath5k if that means anything?

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device e008
Kernel driver in use: ath5k

Does anyone know what could be causing this and if there is a fix?

Thanks very much,

Olly

Last edited by O11Y (2012-05-30 23:49:33)

xaos52 · 2012-05-27 10:43:06

If you are not using the latest kernel available in backports, I would suggest upgrading to it. See if things improve.

VDP76 · 2012-05-27 19:11:31

O11Y wrote:

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device e008
Kernel driver in use: ath5k

same adapter and drivers here and they seem to work well. How close are you to the router? in case it is in a different place form where you are using your laptop, try iwscanner to find the spot with the most signal and/or see if some neighbours' router is interfering with yours.

anyway, +1 for the kernel upgrade! smile

O11Y · 2012-05-28 07:10:18

Thanks for the replies,

There is a chance it could be a hardware / router problem but this netbook is just one device in an extremely geeky household and the other computers / smart phones are working fine. It is really old though so perhaps it's just starting to fall apart.

How would I go about doing a kernel upgrade? The other day I tried to do

aptitude upgrade

and I also tried changing all my ubuntu sources to the latest "oneiric" version and doing an update but neither have had any noticeable effect.

Thanks,

machinebacon · 2012-05-28 07:24:38

^ Hello.

One stupid question first: what is the output of

uname -a

please? And also post

cat /etc/apt/sources.list

Thanks smile

el_koraco · 2012-05-28 07:52:45

O11Y wrote:

and I also tried changing all my ubuntu sources to the latest "oneiric" version and doing an update but neither have had any noticeable effect.

You're running the old, unspupported version of Crunchbang, based on Ubuntu. You need the version based on Debian.

O11Y · 2012-05-28 22:49:33

first one is:

Linux craptop 2.6.32-5-686 #1 SMP Sun May 6 04:01:19 UTC 2012 i686 GNU/Linux

second is:

## CRUNCHBANG
## Compatible with Debian Squeeze, but use at your own risk.
deb http://packages.crunchbang.org/statler statler main
#deb-src http://packages.crunchbang.org/statler statler main

## CRUNCHBANG MULTIMEDIA
## Debian Multimedia Mirror
#deb http://packages.crunchbang.org/statler-mm squeeze main non-free
#deb-src http://packages.crunchbang.org/statler-mm squeeze main non-free

## CRUNCHBANG MOZILLA
## Debian Mozilla Mirror
deb http://packages.crunchbang.org/statler-mozilla squeeze-backports iceweasel-release
#deb-src http://packages.crunchbang.org/statler-mozilla squeeze-backports iceweasel-release

## DEBIAN
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free

## DEBIAN SECURITY
deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
#deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main

## DEBIAN BACKPORTS
deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main contrib non-free

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu oneiric main #X-Updates PPA
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu oneiric main #X-Updates PPA

deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free

finally, I already anticipate that the answer to this will be "no" but is there any way to do an inplace upgrade to the latest version of the OS or do I have to flatten this thing?

Thanks,

Olly

xaos52 · 2012-05-29 09:43:42

If the only gripe you have right now is the wireless, then upgrading to the latest kernel in backports should be sufficient.

If you want the latest version of #!, a fresh install is the recommended way.

Your choice. smile

O11Y · 2012-05-30 17:19:41

xaos52 wrote:

If the only gripe you have right now is the wireless, then upgrading to the latest kernel in backports should be sufficient.

How would I go about upgrading to the latest kernel in the backports?

O11Y · 2012-05-30 18:09:50

Don't worry, i figured it out. For those that are interested the instrucions are here:

https://ticketing.nforce.com/index.php? … le/View/27

It's early days so I'm not sure if it fixed my problem but I will report back in a few days.

Thanks all,

Olly

O11Y · 2012-05-30 21:14:12

Seems to have done the trick. Thanks everyone for your help

VDP76 · 2012-05-30 21:28:19

Great! go ahead and mark the thread as [SOLVED]... wink

machinebacon · 2012-05-30 21:52:03

A bit off-topic, but not:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu oneiric main #X-Updates PPA

i just wonder if this makes sense in the sources.list.... Really no idea, I don't use Intel's 945 or whatever card, but is this needed?

ivanovnegro · 2012-05-30 22:46:52

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu oneiric main #X-Updates PPA

Blasphemy. big_smile

CrunchBang Linux

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#1 2012-05-27 09:58:13

(solved) Poor Wireless Performance

#2 2012-05-27 10:43:06

Re: (solved) Poor Wireless Performance

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#4 2012-05-28 07:10:18

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#6 2012-05-28 07:52:45

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#7 2012-05-28 22:49:33

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