Wireless pcmcia card runs badly in Arch but fine in Wolvix (atheros)

Question

I've got some differences between the way my wireless pcmcia card runs on Wolvix when compared to Arch and I'd appreciate any advice on getting it to run better.
Basically on Arch it sometimes cuts out or stalls for short periods when downloading, but mostly it just does not reach the same speeds as I get when running Wolvix on the very same machine (or windows for that matter). It's fine for browsing in firefox, but for any sizable download the difference really shows. Both installations use Wifi-Radar to connect to the internet and madwifi for the drivers.
Ath5k is disabled in Arch, and does not even try to start-up in Wolvix - so it's a non-issue. I no longer have the network module loading at start-up in Arch (I'd been going through the guides for ages going over my config files and then decided to stop using as many of them as possible - and instead just let wifi-radar connect for me using pretty much the same settings as Wolvix, so that as much as possible was the same as in the Wolvix install)
The main difference seems to be that madwifi and wifiradar are both about a year out of date in Wolvix, but are the latest ones in Arch. The output of iwconfig for both installs is shown below. I've highlighted a couple of differences I spotted.
On wolvix:-
root@wolvix ~ # iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.
eth0      no wireless extensions.
wifi0     no wireless extensions.
ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"FinniX"  Nickname:"FinniX"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.447 GHz  Access Point: 00:0D:88:ED:45:25   
          Bit Rate:24 Mb/s   Tx-Power:16 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3 
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:AB46-DF38-CDEB-89CA-23FB-67DE-47   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=24/94  Signal level=-70 dBm  Noise level=-94 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:215  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
and on Arch:-
[root@FinniX ~]# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.
eth0      no wireless extensions.
wifi0     no wireless extensions.
ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"FinniX"  Nickname:"FinniX"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.447 GHz  Access Point: 00:0D:88:ED:45:25   
          Bit Rate:5 Mb/s   Tx-Power:16 dBm   Sensitivity=1/1 
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:AB46-DF38-CDEB-89CA-23FB-67DE-47   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=20/70  Signal level=-74 dBm  Noise level=-94 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:40  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
There are pretty much no differences between the outputs when I give the ifconfig command or for lsmod | grep ath. inet6 is not up as default on Arch and is on Wolvix (I followed some advice I found on a post and blacklisted it on Arch to see if it helped), but running with inet6 either up or down on arch makes no difference to the speeds, I've tried both.
I'm unable to change the Sensitivity of the wireless card (says I cannot change it on this card when I try) and have no idea how to go about changing the max link quality from 70 to 94. Yet these are the only two unchanging values that are different between the wireless set-up of the two installations.
I think the next move is to replace my current version of madwifi on Arch with an older version that matches the one installed in Wolvix, so that both installations use the same drivers for the card to see if it helps. But I'd really appreciate any input on why the same card functions so much worse in Arch than it does in the slackware based Wolvix.

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply Zenlord I've used ndiswrapper before on another PC for a wireless USB dongle, but I never thought it'd be needed for this card since it's proven to work with madwifi in the past. But it might be worth a try anyway.
As for the card, it's a Kcorp KLG-520 pcmcia card. This is the sites spec page for it:-
http://www.kcorplifestyle.com/products/ … LG-520.htm
Under chipset they give these two results:-
RF: AR2112
BB/MAC: AR5212
and in Arch I get this:-
[root@FinniX ~]# lspci | grep Atheros
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212/AR5213 Multiprotocol MAC/baseband processor (rev 01)
I'll have a look to see if the other distro gives the same output later.
Edit:-
Wolvix output:-
root@wolvix ~ # lspci | grep Atheros
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
Last edited by Nixie (2008-09-30 10:26:31)