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    Limited speed with atheros card

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    • R
      raskas
      last edited by

      Hi All,

      I've bought an Atheros miniPCI card for my soekris to be able to configure my pfSense as a wireless access point.

      Everything is installed and configured but the maximum speed I get through that wireless is around 700K. The speed using an external access point connected to the LAN interface gives me 1.3M.

      I've read somewhere that this is a problem with the atheros driver. Is this correct and when will this be fixed?

      Greetings Johan

      ath0: <atheros 5212="">mem 0xa0010000-0xa001ffff irq 11 at device 14.0 on pci0
      ath0: [ITHREAD]
      ath0: WARNING: using obsoleted if_watchdog interface
      ath0: Ethernet address: 00:0b:6b:d9:d3:e3
      ath0: mac 5.9 phy 4.3 radio 3.6</atheros>

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      • W
        wallabybob
        last edited by

        I'm running pfSense 1.2.3-RC2 on my VIA C3 based box. I have an Atheros PCI wireless interface on pfSense. I also have a Ralink USB WLAN interface on pfSense.

        My netbook has a VIA WLAN interface. From the netbook I have been attempting to copy a 699MB ISO CD image to a windows 2K system. Using the Ralink USB interface on pfSense the netbook reported about 340kB/s transfer rate before the transfer stalled at 441MB. Using the Atheros PCI interface on pfSense the netbook reported a transfer rate of over 1.8MB/s for the duration of the transfer which completed. The netbook has an Atom CPU so its a bit faster than the Soekris :-).

        Another data point!

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        • S
          ScottNJ
          last edited by

          If I'm not mistaken, all of the Soekris boards (except the newer net5501) have USB 1.1 ports. USB 1.1 topped out at 12Mbits.

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          • W
            wallabybob
            last edited by

            Original poster said miniPCI card. How does that relate to USB? (I might have missed something.)

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            • D
              dreamslacker
              last edited by

              @raskas:

              Hi All,

              I've bought an Atheros miniPCI card for my soekris to be able to configure my pfSense as a wireless access point.

              Everything is installed and configured but the maximum speed I get through that wireless is around 700K. The speed using an external access point connected to the LAN interface gives me 1.3M.

              I've read somewhere that this is a problem with the atheros driver. Is this correct and when will this be fixed?

              Greetings Johan

              ath0: <atheros 5212="">mem 0xa0010000-0xa001ffff irq 11 at device 14.0 on pci0
              ath0: [ITHREAD]
              ath0: WARNING: using obsoleted if_watchdog interface
              ath0: Ethernet address: 00:0b:6b:d9:d3:e3
              ath0: mac 5.9 phy 4.3 radio 3.6</atheros>

              Presumably, your WLAN and LAN interface are bridged.
              Can you try doing a file transfer between a computer on the LAN interface and the WLAN interface to verify that it is indeed a problem with the Atheros driver/ card?

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