Recently I have updated my Slackware from version 11 to the latest 13.1 - 64bit
Great distribution, BUT I have problems related to my WIFI connection:
- driver used rt2500pci - correct chosen
- wpa connection - OK - I changed ap_scan from 1 to 2 and removed eapol_version=1 from wpa_supplicant.conf
- rc.inet1.conf: forced channel, essid, rate and IWCONFIG to take "ap MY.HW.AP.ADDR"
- rc.wireless.conf configures again these parameters and "power off" also

At the boot time with this config I have a working Wifi connection, but:
- the name resolution is very slow,
- the download rate is very, very slow (60-100 times slower than what I have had before on Slack 11 with serialmonkey driver),
- ping command report random packet loss: from 5-10% to 50-70%
- slackpkg update/upgrade is working at 6-15ko.

What I tested:
- original driver from kernel 2.6.33.4 (both 32 bit/64 bit), kernel 2.6.34.1 in 64 bit
- Serialmonkey driver seems to not working anymore because of some changed data structure in the kernel.
- recompiled the kernel with/without: power management, rt2500pci module or builtin, SMP support, AMD specific options.

What I have:
- motherboard ELITE with amd RS480 with 1gb ram and as processor an AMD 1800 = 3000+ (I think with venice core - 64bit, monoprocessor)
- wifi as ralink 2500 pci - MSI54G2
- 1gb network card with realtek 8169 and an integrated 100M realtek 8139
- video is integrated in chipset
- audio, firewire, paralel port, floppy, etc are deactivated from BIOS

The last driver that worked well was from serialmonkey (STA driver with a configuration file in /etc/Wireless). The last working well kernel 2.6.20.XX. Never used before wpa_supplicant on this machine, but the same configuration works very well on a MSI laptop with the same wifi card (RT2500 pci chipset) but used on an ubuntu distribution (was passed through 9.0, 9.10, 10.04).

Recently I have seen activity in RT2500 driver developed on kernel.org. This driver seems to be rewritten from scratch and I do not know if I need just to wait a new kernel to work or if I missed something in my configuration.
This machine serve me as server 24h/day for many years -8- and it passed even many hardware updates and ALWAYS runs Slackware, but now I am little bit confused if I must change the OS or not.

Any help is appreciated

why would you need to change OS, if you can use other OS drivers with ndiwrapper?


Installing wireless driver on linux

Thank you for your proposition!
My goal is to keep using slack 13.1 with the default or the latest kernel using only native linux drivers. I didn't tested yet Ndiswrapper but for the moment I do not consider this option neither. I would prefer to use a native linux driver even on an older kernel.

Besides, I am not 100% sure that this problem is a driver only issue.
Once, in my tests with 2.6.34.1 kernel I have obtained a kernel where the ping to my switch (1st hop) was less than 1ms, constant and without any loss. The problem was that a ping to other "hop" was not possible because of a socket error. I do not have this config anymore because I did a "make mrproper" to try to find a good way to compile it.

I do not have any iptables firewall, selinux, traffic shaping active in my config.

I suspect that some dependency for this driver (rt2500pci) is not satisfied or not well configured. Or maybe another component compiled in kernel interact in a strange way with this driver.

Do you know what I could activate as debug to have useful debug information?
I have tried to add debug info to the driver but I am flooded with some TKIP information that I do not need and I do not understand neither.

some news:
- I have also a laptop MSI S271 turion1800x2 + ralink 2500 where I have an Ubuntu10.04. Before I have had Ubuntu 9.04, and 9.10. Guess what? On this machine rt2500pci always worked flawlessly!
- I have returned to my server and launched ubuntu 10.04 (live cd). proc AMD 1800x1 and ralink 2500. Guess what??? NOT WORKING!
If I launch and apt-get update, the name resolution is slow, then the update begins at a speed around 70-80ko, then it drops quickly to 0, then it keeps like this - 0, then disconnects.
Ping to google gives - network not found, then later it pings with some packet loss. same on my gateway. Sometimes the gateway gives 0 packet loss.
If I pass "irqpoll" option to kernel at the boot time, the driver never associates with the switch.
Some live freeBSD images (8.1) gives a warning/error at the boot time regarding IRQ settings on all network cards (even ethernet). I didn't have time to test a FreeBSD distribution, yet.

As I have a asus usb dongle with rt2500, I tested this driver too. The rt2500usb loads fine. It associate well with the switch, but it is not capable to respond well to ping. A ping to a third computer in the same network is sometimes ok, but a ping to the gateway fails.
I tried to change the timer frequency(250,300,1000), to put the pooling to server instead of desktop but nothing changes.
A small recap: no iptables, no selinux, no traffic shape, prioritizers, etc (the presence of the code in the kernel nothing changes neither). Tried with, without ACPI, APM or even all PM options and nothing changes.
Tried in BIOS all IRQ on Auto, PCI, but not on reserved (yet ).

I don't really think that is 100% driver fault, so I call your experience to tell me where I can look to be able to restore my wifi network.

some strange updates:
The last think i did yesterday was a shutdown in Xubuntu 10.04 which didn't shutdown completed my machine - I pushed the on/off button to completely turn off my server.

This morning I planned to continue my tests and... when I powered-on my Slack 13.1 which yesterday didn't worked at all, the WiFi network was OK.
Ping - 1-10 ms, no packet loss to gateway.
Not to fast name resolution, but slackupdate works at normal speed - average speed around 600-800ko.
After some tests ping begin to loose packets to gateway, ping speed increased slightly, but the download speed through slackupdate is very good. Other sites are also seen at a 'normal' speed.
I am not suspecting load mechanism of the new kernel because the driver was loaded/removed/reloaded many times without any improvement during my tests.

Now all my thoughts goes to a wrong Init/Shutdown sequence of the WIFI card!!
Did you/anyone/ encountered this issue?

I'm having this problem in Debian Lenny. Same card, but much older hardware (The server in my sig). D/L speeds on my BCM4312 laptop are 300-800kb/s (depending on the time of day), but on my RT2500PCI server, only 44kb/s ish. I'm currently using scp to transfer a movie, and it's at about 70kb/s.