[Solved] Wireless woes, odd problems.

Question

Hey all. Working on my first install of arch. Had to go with packages from the CD for reasons that will become clear below.
During the install I was able to bring up the wireless without much trouble. However, actually using it proves to be a problem. It's *extremely* slow - sometimes I can ping google (with 2000+ ms response times, always), sometimes I can't. Downloading packages is out of the question.
So, with the installed system, same thing. I can only get the wireless working by stopping the network daemon from running during boot (!network in rc) and doing it all manually. Bringing up the interface (wlan0), setting the essid, dhcpcd, etc. This usually works, sometimes it doesn't and I need to reboot completely and start over. Same thing as during install - incredibly slow. Useless for all practical purposes.
Signal is good. No security for now. I've tried editing the dhcpcd conf to read nameservers from resolv instead of getting them from dhcp - same thing. FWIW I've got multiple connections in the same room that work just fine (7/OSX).
It's almost like it's having trouble resolving, but even once it finally does the speed is in the realm of .3-.6k/sec.
Thoughts?
Edit: Atheros, using ath5k, auto-detected and auto-loaded. Tried ath9k by manually removing 5k and loading it, no dice. Have not tried ath_pci as it is not installed. I may try to pull it off the CD somehow and load it up. It's a 5001X+ / AR5213A chip.
Edit 2: Much google-fu. Not much help. I've got everything back to default - dhcpcd fails on boot - the following will bring it up;
    ifconfig wlan0 up
    iwconfig wlan0 essid myssidhere
    dhcpcd wlan0
Tried manually setting the rate per the kernel.org ath5k help page. No change in speed, still getting ping responses in the 2000ms range. So while I do have connectivity it's still worthless. As an aside, if I add the correct lines to my rc.conf for the network to pull dhcp from my router/correct ssid automatically, it still fails. Needs manual doing.
Edit 3: While attempting to update some select packages, it seems that downloading most anything over a few hundred kb fails. I'm unsure if it's killing my connection or if pacman is deciding to try another mirror or what. The speeds fluctuate wildly, sometimes around 35k/sec, but always end up very very low, quickly, up for a sec, down down down, then failure. Unfortunately I do not have the ability to have a wired connection =/
Last edited by entity7 (2010-05-04 16:02:09)

Answer 1

Problem solved. I'm posting this as a humbling reminder to not forget your basic troubleshooting steps. I reached back and moved the antenna 1/4 inch and went from crap to full connection instantly - mind that the signal quality did NOT change, just the speed. This is also quite strange considering that 2 other OS installs on that PC have/had a functioning connection.
Anyway, thanks Sin and thunder!