Arch Linux

scorpio2002

Member

Registered: 2009-03-14

Posts: 10

Wireless low signal

Hi there!
I need all of your expertise to understand what's going on with my pc. I have this MacBook and a strange issue with the wirless card. Basically, even if I get very close to the AP, the signal is always low and if I ping I lose a lot of packets. This is very strange, because everybody else in my house doesn't have this problem and they get a perfect signal and no packet loss. Do I need to exsorcise my pc? XD

arkham

Member

From: Stockholm

Registered: 2008-10-26

Posts: 516

Website

Re: Wireless low signal

That.
Or give yus more information, like card used, driver used, and output of the commands ifconfig -a and iwconfig

---

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scorpio2002

Member

Registered: 2009-03-14

Posts: 10

Re: Wireless low signal

Good idea:

dmesg:
wifi0: Atheros AR5424 chip found (MAC 10.3, PHY SChip 6.1, Radio 10.2)
ath0 (ath_pci): not using net_device_ops yet
ath_pci: wifi0: Atheros 5424/2424: mem=0x90100000, irq=17

iwconfig:
ath0    IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"FASTWEB-1-00036F3A08D8"  Nickname:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:03:6F:3A:08:E0   
          Bit Rate:12 Mb/s   Tx-Power:17 dBm   Sensitivity=1/1 
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:**************************   Security mode:restricted
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=18/70  Signal level=-74 dBm  Noise level=-92 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:1574  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

ifconfig:ath0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:17:F2:51:11:E8 
          inet addr:23.255.37.254  Bcast:23.255.39.255  Mask:255.255.248.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::217:f2ff:fe51:11e8/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:20 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:2738 (2.6 Kb)  TX bytes:1599 (1.5 Kb)

scorpio2002

Member

Registered: 2009-03-14

Posts: 10

Re: Wireless low signal

Before calling the exorcist, I thought that maybe the output of iwconfig on another Linux box could help. So, here it is:

dmesg:
wifi0: Atheros 5212: mem=0x35200000, irq=18

iwconfig:
ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"FASTWEB-1-00036F3A08D8"  Nickname:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:03:6F:3A:08:E0   
          Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:18 dBm   Sensitivity=1/3 
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=94/94  Signal level=-1 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:9140  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Of course this computer is in the same room... please note how good the signal is...

ralvez

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2005-12-06

Posts: 1,718

Website

Re: Wireless low signal

Have you considered that it could be a bad WiFi card you have there? You may want to use a swappable wifi card (or a USB wifi) to test. If the temp wifi card works fine then you have your answer and your pc exorcised

R.