I have a Asus W7J laptop with a 3945 wireless card and use the ipw3945 daemon. I dual-boot using Kubuntu
(Ubuntu 6.10 edgy) and Win XP .

I have a question regarding the strength of wireless signals. This week I attended a technical conference in Tampa. The conference people supplied wireless access to the participants. I was able to use the wireless under both Linux and XP. However, in some of the more remote corners of the conference hotel, the ipw3945 was unable to connect. I had no such problems with XP.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Is there a way to increase the ability to connect with a weaker signal when using the ipw3945 daemon?

Thanks all.


[moved from Laptops by spinynorman]

Strangely enough I had the opposite experience, with Win XP I had a weak signal which the connection sometimes dropping, while with Mandriva 2008 and Ubuntu 7.10 I have a much better signal, and even if it drops there are no Problems reconnecting. Maybe you could try kwifi-manager.

I currently use wicd. In an earlier post I was encouraged to switch from KNetworkManager to wicd link

I don't believe I have ever used kwifi-manager. Something to think about.....

I used it so far only on Mandriva 2008, because it lets you deactivate the wifi antenna, a function I have not found so far in Mandrivas network-tool (which is otherwise fantastic), but maybe I am just to silly to find the switch there.

i've seen the same issue. on the university campus i'm on there are two distinct sets of wireless networks: one for visitors and the other for university affiliates. in the same office within 5 minutes of each other the linux (using ipw3945d just like you're using) struggled to even find the signal (/sbin/iwlist eth1 scan) while under windows it showed a strong signal strength. in windows i'm actually using the intel tool that came with it and not the windows wireless-manager. i would think that since they're both from intel, they'd work equivalently. but perhaps something is amiss.

jon

Seems the ipw-driver has a problem if there are more than one wireless network with about the same signal strength, I once had this problem at home (there is another wireless network in my neighbourhood), but since windows had the same problems connecting that day and it never surfaced again, I did not digg any deeper into the problem.

Edit:

Just encountered something really weird: with Mandriva I can connect to my wireless network without problems, with Ubuntu 7.10 I get no connection at the moment
there is one other network at the moment and both the Mandriva Network Tool and KKWifiManager say 45-49 % signal strength for my own network
will try how other distributions behave

I have problems with ipw3945 crashing my machine every 3 hours or so. It stops responding, and then I can't shut my machine down, other than a hard reset (5 seconds or more on the power button).

This is progress on the older driver version since I couldn't get anything on that. I managed to connect once, but after that it never worked again. And even, the iwlwifi driver for 3945 or 4965 is even worse.

Thanks for the responses folks, I appreciate the feedback. It appears that ipw3945 has some problems.

That's funny... my daughter's laptop has an onboard 3945, and it is working right out of the box without ANY issue (she is running PCLinuxOS 2007).
My antenna signal is quite weak, but she had no trouble connecting even from some 100 ft. away!

I would say that my ipw3945 troubles occurred when I was perhaps 300 feet from the antenna.

distance < 300 feet, both XP and KUbuntu worked
distance > 300 feet, XP worked

Funny thing on my thinkpad is that mandriva works best, windows worked ok (although it always showed weaker signals than mandriva) and ubuntu only works if it wants, but then it shows roughly the same signal strength and connection speed as mandriva, it just does not want to connect sometimes (couldn't persuade it to work reliably so far) still have to test debian, fedora and opensuse

haven't tested the distance, but my access point is "at the other end of the house" (there are two concrete walls and one ceiling between access point and notebook)

It can depend on how new/old your hardware is to the success of your version of ipw card.

but I still don't understand the different behaviour of different distributions with the same card, so far only mandriva and to some extent winxp worked reliably with it ???

behaviour on fedora 7 is the same as on ubuntu 7.10

different firmware ??? just guessing

I also noticed that, Debian Etch/SID, Ubuntu 7.04 and Fedora 7 all had the symptoms of connecting the first time, and never again after that.

haven't tested debian etch yet, but they all use network-manager ?, at least on my notebook I have the impression it is not the driver but network-manager that for some strange reason does not want to connect

I came to this conclusion too

on my x86-64 Mandriva I have encountered these lockups that ian mentioned, but they are sporadic and if I wait just some 10 to 15 seconds the system is responding again

haven't tested any other x86-64 Linux so far

I'm on x86 (32bit) and it's permanent for me unfortunately. Then the nice big kill switch, and some journal repairing to the filesystem before I was back up and running again.

Now, I don't use it, but will try it again sometime when packages have updated. Will give it six months, should be OK then.

so far I haven't encountered them on 32 bit, but lately I'm using mostly 64 bit, which is otherwise rock-solid, the lockup is mostly accompanied by a short loss of my wireless connection but it always reconnects (and as I already said, these lockups are wery few and the system always recovers)

I might have to try 64 bit sometime then.

I think we kind of hijacked this thread a bit

was not intended, it just happened

Sometimes we just get too carried away (I know I do)