Wireless problems

From: Tony Houghton (tony_at_realh.co.uk)
Date: 08/23/03 

Date: 23 Aug 2003 19:48:22 GMT

I've got an ADSL router and I recently bought a Netgear MA401 wireless
card for my laptop and an ME102 WAP.

Before I detail the problem, can someone confirm that I've assigned IP
addresses correctly? The router has address 10.0.0.2 and I use static
IPs on my LAN. I figured that the WAP has to appear as a machine on the
LAN so it has to have an address in the router's subnet; I chose
10.0.0.20. Perhaps I've got this completely wrong, but I was under the
impression that more than one PC can share a WAP. Therefore each would
have to have its own address, and as the WAP only has one address,
rather than one facing the router and one facing the WLAN, my laptop
would need a separate IP address in the same subnet; I chose 10.0.0.30.
So have I completely cocked that up?

Anyway, at first it seemed to work set up as above, except that under
Linux on the laptop, the connection would keep stalling and sometimes
fail to recover. The weaker the signal quality the worse it would be,
but it would still do it a bit even with 40% quality or better, and it
would also fail to recover from some of the stalls even if I moved the
laptop right next to the WAP to get as high a signal quality as
possible.

I noticed that with the laptop running Windows, while not perfectly
smooth, it seemed better, and certainly always recovered from these
stalls. So I tried getting alternative drivers to work on Linux, but
I've made it worse. Now the connection doesn't work at all, although it
behaves as if it's connected OK and I get a signal quality reading in
gkrellm.

I'm using Debian 3.0, but I was originally using kernel 2.4.20 with
pcmcia-cs 3.2.4, using the latter's driver modules. I've since upgraded
to kernel 2.4.21. I'm using the orinoco_cs driver.

This is showing up in syslog. I expect the problem is the multicast
error, but I don't know what it means and how to fix it:

Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima kernel: eth0: Station identity 001f:0006:0001:0003
Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima kernel: eth0: Looks like an Intersil firmware version 1.3.6
Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima kernel: eth0: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima kernel: eth0: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima kernel: eth0: WEP supported, 104-bit key
Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima kernel: eth0: MAC address 00:09:5B:54:1D:97
Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima kernel: eth0: Station name "Prism I"
Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima kernel: eth0: ready
Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima kernel: eth0: index 0x01: Vcc 5.0, irq 3, io 0x0100-0x013f
Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima cardmgr[836]: executing: './network start eth0'
Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima kernel: eth0: Error -110 setting multicast list.
Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima last message repeated 2 times
Aug 22 00:29:28 proxima kernel: eth0: New link status: Connected (0001)
                                                                                

This also showed up a few times earlier, with the same symptoms IIRC.

Aug 21 22:17:38 proxima cardmgr[1102]: executing: './network start eth0'
Aug 21 22:17:39 proxima kernel: eth0: New link status: Association
Failed (0006)Aug 21 22:17:45 proxima kernel: eth0: New link status: Connected (0001)
Aug 21 22:18:38 proxima kernel: orinoco_lock() called with hw_unavailable (dev=c6202000)
Aug 21 22:18:38 proxima cardmgr[1102]: executing: './network stop eth0'

My /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts (full MAC obscured just in case):
                                                                                
*,*,*,00:09:5B:*)
    INFO="Netgear MA401"
    ESSID="Sirius"
    MODE="Managed"
    RATE="auto"
    # Encryption key : 4567-89AB-CD, s:password
    KEY='xxxxxxxxxx [1] key xxxxxxxxxx [2] key xxxxxxxxxx [3] key xxxxxxxxxx [4]key [1]'
    # RTS threshold : off, 500
    ;;
                                                                                
My /etc/pcmcia/network.opts:
                                                                                
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*,*)
    INFO="Sample private network setup"
    # Transceiver selection, for some cards -- see 'man ifport'
    IF_PORT=""
    # Use BOOTP (via /sbin/bootpc, or /sbin/pump)? [y/n]
    BOOTP="n"
    # Use DHCP (via /sbin/dhcpcd, /sbin/dhclient, or /sbin/pump)? [y/n]
    DHCP="n"
    # If you need to explicitly specify a hostname for DHCP requests
    DHCP_HOSTNAME=""
    # Host's IP address, netmask, network address, broadcast address
    IPADDR="10.0.0.30"
    NETMASK="255.255.255.0"
    NETWORK="10.0.0.0"
    BROADCAST="10.0.0.255"
    # Gateway address for static routing
    GATEWAY="10.0.0.2"
    # Things to add to /etc/resolv.conf for this interface
    DOMAIN=""
    SEARCH=""
    DNS_1="10.0.0.2"
    DNS_2=""
    DNS_3=""
    # NFS mounts, should be listed in /etc/fstab
    MOUNTS=""
    # If you need to override the interface's MTU...
    MTU=""
    # For IPX interfaces, the frame type and network number
    IPX_FRAME=""
    IPX_NETNUM=""
    # Extra stuff to do after setting up the interface
    start_fn () { return; }
    # Extra stuff to do before shutting down the interface
    stop_fn () { return; }
    # Card eject policy options
    NO_CHECK=n
    NO_FUSER=n
    ;;
esac

TIA. 

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