Arch Linux

Mountainjew

Member

From: Ireland

Registered: 2008-08-24

Posts: 405

Netcfg not reaching full bitrate

So i got a new wireless adapter with the rt2870 chipset.

I could only get it to work with Wireless N by installing the rt2870 package from the AUR. So at the minute i'm using the network daemon to connect without encryption. It uses a config from /etc/wireless/RT2870STA.dat, which contains the following:

#The word of "Default" must not be removed
Default
CountryRegion=5
CountryRegionABand=7
CountryCode=GB
ChannelGeography=1
SSID=dlink46
NetworkType=Infra
WirelessMode=7
Channel=11
BeaconPeriod=100
TxPower=100
BGProtection=0
TxPreamble=0
RTSThreshold=2347
FragThreshold=2346
TxBurst=1
PktAggregate=0
WmmCapable=1
AckPolicy=0;0;0;0
AuthMode=OPEN
EncrypType=NONE
WPAPSK=
DefaultKeyID=1
Key1Type=0
Key1Str=
Key2Type=0
Key2Str=
Key3Type=0
Key3Str=
Key4Type=0
Key4Str=
PSMode=CAM
AutoRoaming=0
RoamThreshold=70
APSDCapable=0
APSDAC=0;0;0;0
HT_RDG=1
HT_EXTCHA=0
HT_OpMode=0
HT_MpduDensity=4
HT_BW=1
HT_BADecline=0
HT_AutoBA=1
HT_AMSDU=0
HT_BAWinSize=64
HT_GI=1
HT_MCS=33
HT_MIMOPSMode=3
HT_DisallowTKIP=1
IEEE80211H=0
TGnWifiTest=0
WirelessEvent=0
CarrierDetect=0
AntDiversity=0
BeaconLostTime=4
PSP_XLINK_MODE=0

And here's the output of iwconfig:

[mountainjew@archy ~]$ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

ra0       Ralink STA  ESSID:"dlink46"  Nickname:"RT2870STA"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency=2.462 GHz  Access Point: 1C:AF:F7:25:E6:DE   
          Bit Rate=270 Mb/s   
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Link Quality=89/100  Signal level:-54 dBm  Noise level:-71 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

The only way i get full wireless speed is by setting the WirelessMode to 6 or 7. I know this kind of setup is supposed to be depricated, but it's the only way i get full speed. Now i'm trying to use encryption, and for some reason it doesn't work by editing that RT2870STA file with the encryption info. So i tried netcfg, and it connects fine using WPA2, but i only get 54Mb/s instead of 270Mb/s, which i normally get. I assume this is because it doesn't touch that file anymore through netcfg.

So how can i get netcfg to set the wireless mode to N?

Oh and here's my netcfg profile:

CONNECTION='wireless'
DESCRIPTION='A simple WPA encrypted wireless connection'
INTERFACE='ra0'
SECURITY='wpa'
ESSID='dlink46'
KEY='*********'
IP='dhcp'

Last edited by Mountainjew (2010-03-23 04:12:36)

---

Last.fm

dmartins

Member

Registered: 2006-09-23

Posts: 360

Re: Netcfg not reaching full bitrate

I have a WLAN card that keeps connecting at 1Mbps. I can fix this using sudo iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M.

Looking at the netfcfg wiki article, there is IWCONFIG and PRE/POST_UP/DOWN configuration variables. You could try setting the rate using the IWCONFIG setting. That's what I'm going to try after work today. I'll let you know how it works out.