On Fri, 2007-10-19 at 14:35 -0500, David C. Rankin J.D. P.E. wrote:
Listmates:
With 10.3, my AR5212/5213 wireless card using the madwifi driver and wpa_supplicant I get only 50% of the signal strength that it did with 10.2. This Signal Strength Change Occurred Between openSuSE 10.2 and 10.3. Since the system is a dual boot system, I can confirm that signal strength is still 100% normal on the dark side of my laptop.
With openSuSE 10.2 using madwifi and wpa_supplicant, signal strength was always 100% no matter where I was in my house or office. (Both have linksys WRT54G access points). The distances involved are 15 meters or less.
The signal strength loss occurred when I upgraded my laptop from 10.2 to 10.3. The loss is present even if I put my laptop (Toshiba P35) right in front of the AP. (I have had the same wireless setup for over 2 years)
Whatever changed in the latest 1 or 2 releases of madwifi or wpa has definitively caused changes to the ability of the driver to get good signal strength. I don't know what is causing it, but I can CONFIRM the problem with madwifi under openSuSE 10.3 with the Atheros AR5212/5213 driver on my Toshiba P35. athstats now shows crc errors that were not there before:
The fact that it was always 100% was wrong in NetworkManager (we had a
workaround in earlier suse versions but it broke with the newer madwifi
drivers):
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=293556
We fixed this in a recent 10.3 update because it was extremely
deceptive. The problem is then either in the madwifi driver and how it
outputs signal strength or NM and how it calculates signal strength.
-JP
--
JP Rosevear