Ath0 card with one Antenna : Very poor signal /Which settings to change and How?

neobauer

Hi All,

The miniPCI card Complex WLE200NX I'm using has two connectors for Antennas. But for my purposes, I bought only one Antenna. I'm getting a very very poor signal an I guess it's the because it's trying to use the diversity property, enabling the use of two anntennas. TX & RX must be changed to the one port (on the card shown as "1" - I have port "0" and "1").

when I browse to /sbin and type sysctl -a | grep dev.ath.0.rxantenna, I get
dev.ath.0.rxantenna: 1

and
sysctl -a | grep dev.ath.0.rxantenna
gives me
dev.ath.0.rxantenna: 0

dev.ath.0.diversity does not exist :o

So how to change those settings please and let them permanent ? Thanks !
Or do you think the issue with the very poor signal is somewhere else ?

Guest

I had problems with some of the earlier versions where the settings were not saved on reboot, but that was the Channel option.
I will try messing with the antenna stuff tonight as i have a working setup. I am curious as well to see how the following options work: Auto, Default , 0, 1
I have always assigned each a number and that has worked for me. I am curious if Auto detects weather TX or RX or what.
I will pull an antenna out to see if my speeds take a dive. I saw a guru on here talking about MIMO 3X3 and wonder how that works. I see no additional options when i slip in a TPlink MIMO i have. It does work OK though. No options for third antenna.

I assume you are using 2.2 alpha??
I see no beacon stuck errors with the new version either. I saw some error messages at the console with an AR9580 but they looked related to a channel changes i did.

While on the topic I wonder how "Auto" picks the channel for Wifi compared to manual channel setting.

I feel you problems may be related to channels as crowded channels are pretty common in populated areas..

Guest

OK did some testing on 2.2 Snapshot. On my wireless settings>> Antenna Settings i have :Auto,Default,1,2 (testing on Atheros5416/miniPCI)
When i set both -RX Antenna to 1 and TX Antenna to 1 -it will only use the one antenna. If i disconnect the antenna it drops off as it should.
So in my testing i pulled antenna 2 and set it to 1 on both TX/RX and did some quick speed testing and it did not affect my speeds one bit. I have the wifi connection rate as high as 135M today and I am still working on some good benchmark methods. Currently I use the Vizio speed test on their TV setup menu. I also use HD tune connected to an ISCSI drive and do some file transfers to boot. My nas is weak so i am upgrading my freenas box . My notebook has an intel wifi and who knows what the visio uses for wifi.
I was real surprised to see no difference in speed with one antenna and i actually can see more neighboring AP in my area with one antenna than two(In the Wireless status section). Testing with stock duckie antennas.. I set both to antennas to "Auto" and that worked the same with only one antenna attached or both. As it should

I have the same Atheros radio your trying to use(TPLink version) and will move back up my stream of parts once i hit the bottom. I want to test the MIMO stuff more but wanted to see how the older draft N cards did. Nothing notable. All worked well in N mode.

So in summary: Your not missing anything major with only one antenna.

What does the Status>Wireless page say is your connection rate? I am not saying that is definitive but it is somewhere to start. I notice mine is dynamic..Under load and on start-up it goes to 135M but after idle it drops down. Maybe power saving features for the radio. I dunno. I realize you will never achieve these theoretical rates but i look at it like a modem. You start diagnosing by looking at the connection speed. Then start doing some speed testing. This all after a good site survey(Looking at all your neighboring-AP users channels and finding holes). Finding a good channel is the most important in my testing. I have 2 out of 13 that seem optimal.

I am really wondering about 5GHZ/N stuff. I only see channels for 2.5GHZ(1-13) and the radio is showing both 2.5/5GHZ at console bootup.

Good Luck and ask as many questions as you want. I don't know much but will try and help.

neobauer

Hi Phishfry,
Thank you very much for your post and sry for the delayed feedback.
You said you are also using Complex WLE200NX ?
I'm still running Pfsense 2.1.5 and not 2.2 Alpha, I'm afraid to run the alpla version because I read many things are still not working except Wifi drivers.. How is your experience with it ?
I guess the issue that I have with my Wireless is probably the version of Pfsense / FreeBSD in use ?
Thanks
Neo