Intel 5300 weak reception

el mariachi · 2011-01-26 11:55:32

hey! my intel 5300 arrived today and it seems to work fine, aside from the poor signal --- certainly due to the fact that only 2 antennas are connected. The package had a third "extra" one, but where do I put it? It seems I have to glue it to someplace, my laptop only has 2 anntenas (the white and black cables, no gray).

EDIT: I installed it with the 3 antennas (white>1, laptop's other cable>3, extra antenna glued to the inside of the laptop>2). Still having a weak reception.

Last edited by el mariachi (2011-01-27 18:00:10)

.:B:. · 2011-01-26 14:08:38

The internal antennae are connected to the chassis normally, you might be able to do some hardware hackery, but if two connectors is what you got, then normally that's what you gonna have to work with.

el mariachi · 2011-01-26 18:10:29

well I connected the third antenna like the guy who sold it told me (connected it to the nº2 receptor on the board). but the reception is pretty bad :S
I mean.. I get the 54mbs but the signal quality is really bad and I know it's from the 5300 because my gf's notebook with windows gets 100% quality signal.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11abgn  ESSID:"SONAECOM_99BF"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: C0:D0:44:2F:99:C0   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=46/70  Signal level=-64 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:1  Invalid misc:36   Missed beacon:0

I manually issued

 iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M

and the speed became optimum, but the signal quality is still bad. What can I do? Isn't the "Signal level" supposed to be higher?

OdinEidolon · 2011-02-02 09:04:50

I have had the same problem for a year or so. Reception is very bad, I can't seem to make it work. I too added an antenna, and disabling power management with

 # iwconfig wlan0 power off

only partially solves the problem. I've also used another 5300 wireless card, but had the same problem. I suspect this is something hardware specific, since the 5300 is not a very common wireless card (much less common than the 5100).
Also, going from wicd to networkmanager seemed to help, but this means that the problem is not hardware-specific, right?
I did not try to connect manually tho.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-01-26 11:55:32

Intel 5300 weak reception

#2 2011-01-26 14:08:38

Re: Intel 5300 weak reception

#3 2011-01-26 18:10:29

Re: Intel 5300 weak reception

#4 2011-02-02 09:04:50

Re: Intel 5300 weak reception

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