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Need help with troubleshooting the WiFi connection


coverup
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My old router has died, and has been replaced with the new unit Netgear WNDR3800. The new router works very well with all Windows and Ubuntu PCs, and kindles that I have at home. The only unfortunate exception is my Mandriva 2008 laptop.

 

The WiFi interface is recognized by the router, and it obtains the IP address. The nameserver and routing table are also configured OK. I can ping the router. However web browsing is painfully slow. I tried to modify the routing table to make it look exactly like the table in Ubuntu, where the WiFi performance of this laptop is blissful fast (the laptop has Ubuntu 8.04 as well on one of the partitions), but that did not help either.

 

Will anybody here be able to help with fixing this? The card works fine with Ubuntu and Windows on the same Laptop, so it is clearly a Mandriva related issue. I had previously had occasional problems with configuring this card, but usually could fix these problems by running through the interface config procedure. Unfortunately, doing so does not help this time around.

 

Here is some detailed information. The WiFi card is INTEL Pro Wireless 4965AGN. I have been using the native Intel driver that came with Mandriva.

 

$ more /etc/resolv.conf 

nameserver 192.168.0.1

 

Original Mandriva's routing table

# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     35     0        0 wlan0
169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U     35     0        0 wlan0
127.0.0.0       0.0.0.0         255.0.0.0       U     0      0        0 lo
0.0.0.0         192.168.0.1     0.0.0.0         UG    35     0        0 wlan0

 

The modified Ubuntu-like routing table

# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     10     0        0 wlan0
127.0.0.0       0.0.0.0         255.0.0.0       U     1000   0        0 lo
0.0.0.0         192.168.0.1     0.0.0.0         UG    10     0        0 wlan0

Any help please,

 

EDIT: I have replaced NETGEAR with Dlink DIR-835. Still no luck...

Edited by coverup
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I can't imagine it would be a routing problem.

More likely to be a proxy problem, or a browser based problem

Hmm, could you please be more specific? I am not using proxy at all. Occasionally, I can load some very basic pages, but even www.google.com is painfully slow. If I connect the ethernet cable (and let ifplugd do its things), then the connection is very fast - the speed test clocks close to 8Mps, stated by my ISP. Once the cable is disconnected, the laptop is back on its knees...

 

Oh, when on WiFi, I cannot connect to my server at work via ssh from the command line (of course the wired connection over the ethernet is not a problem). Does this rule out the possibility of a browser based problem?

Edited by coverup
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It could be a DNS proxy issue. Edit your /etc/resolv.conf and give external DNS servers and see if it improves in terms of speed. You can use something like this:

 

# Google DNS
nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

 

# OpenDNS
nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

 

and check if it's any faster. This will rule out the router having problems forwarding the DNS externally. Sometimes DNS Proxying can be a problem, I had this on my firewall at home, and this was a GBP 400-500 device which isn't exactly cheap, and you'd expect it to work better than standard home routers. Only thing I can think of at present. Try it and let us know.

 

Also, check the router wireless settings, in case you are using some encryption settings that might not be completely supported by the particular WIFI module on your Linux system. If using WPA or WPA2, change to WPA and also encryption TKIP, as this is the basic one. Perhaps you are using WPA2 and AES. Another alternative is temporarily run the WIFI without encryption and see if it's any better to rule it out.

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It could be a DNS proxy issue. Edit your /etc/resolv.conf and give external DNS servers and see if it improves in terms of speed. You can use something like this:

 

# Google DNS
nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

 

# OpenDNS
nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

 

and check if it's any faster. This will rule out the router having problems forwarding the DNS externally. Sometimes DNS Proxying can be a problem, I had this on my firewall at home, and this was a GBP 400-500 device which isn't exactly cheap, and you'd expect it to work better than standard home routers. Only thing I can think of at present. Try it and let us know.

 

Also, check the router wireless settings, in case you are using some encryption settings that might not be completely supported by the particular WIFI module on your Linux system. If using WPA or WPA2, change to WPA and also encryption TKIP, as this is the basic one. Perhaps you are using WPA2 and AES. Another alternative is temporarily run the WIFI without encryption and see if it's any better to rule it out.

Unfortunately, none of this helped. I decided to return WNDR3800 and have a fresh start with Dlink DIR-835. When I first unpacked the router, and used it with very basic settings (secure WiFi, and default dhcp settings), I initially had a pretty slow connection, but somehow it stopped, and the wlan interface again does not work.

 

I added 8.8.8.8 to resolve.conf along with 192.168.0.1. The router has been set up for WPA-personal with TKIP encryption, and SSID broadcast enabled. The laptop is even getting the IP address and I can ping the router (1-2ms), www.google.com (10-20ms), and the webserver of my ISP (the latter ping is quite uneven, from min 7ms to max 210ms). On a rare occasion, I can even browse to google, but such occasions are rather an exception.

 

Anyway, I like this :wall:

 

EDIT: I just figured out that even though the laptop is allocated the IP address, the router does not show it on the list of connected wireless devices. Could this be a clue?

Edited by coverup
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  • 3 weeks later...

Unfortunately, the problem persists... I figured out that even when I ping the router, quite a few packets go lost (around 60%). And this only happen when I use Mandriva. The same laptop is very happy when I run Ubuntu 2008 on it, so I suspect something is wrong with the WiFi driver (:

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