Wireless Rate Setting set to 11Mb

bgeddy · 03-06-2007, 08:55 PM

After much mucking around I have managed to get my Broadcomm wireless card working with WPA using wpa_supplicant - marvellous!!
However, iwconfig is reporting a rate of 11Mb unless I specifically set the rate to 54M from the cli with:

Code:

iwconfig eth1 rate 54M

when iwconfig then reports a bit rate of 54Mb/sec. I have this is my rc.wireless.conf

Code:

# Generic example (decribe all possible settings)
*)
    INFO="Eds Broadcomm Wireless"
    # ESSID (extended network name) : My Network, any
    ESSID="BTVOYAGER2091-59"
    # NWID/Domain (cell identifier) : 89AB, 100, off
    NWID=""
    # Operation mode : Ad-Hoc, Managed, Master, Repeater, Secondary, auto
    MODE="Managed"
    # Frequency or channel : 1, 2, 3 (channel) ; 2.422G, 2.46G (frequency)
    FREQ=""
    CHANNEL="2"
    # Sensitivity (cell size + roaming speed) : 1, 2, 3 ; -70 (dBm)
    SENS=""
    # Bit rate : auto, 1M, 11M
    RATE="54M"
    # Encryption key : 4567-89AB-CD, s:password
    KEY=""
    # RTS threshold : off, 500
    RTS=""
    # Fragmentation threshold : off, 1000
    FRAG=""
    # Other iwconfig parameters : power off, ap 01:23:45:67:89:AB
    IWCONFIG=""
    # iwspy parameters : + 01:23:45:67:89:AB
    IWSPY=""
    # iwpriv parameters : set_port 2, set_histo 50 60
    IWPRIV=""
    ;;
esac

and this in my rc.inet1.conf

Code:

# Config information for eth1:
IPADDR[1]=""
NETMASK[1]=""
USE_DHCP[1]="yes"
DHCP_HOSTNAME[1]=""
WLAN_ESSID[1]=BTVOYAGER2091-59
WLAN_MODE[1]=Managed
WLAN_RATE[1]="54M auto"
WLAN_CHANNEL[1]="2"
WLAN_KEY[1]="here_is_my_secret_key"
#WLAN_IWPRIV[1]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=here_is_my_secret_key TxRate=0"
WLAN_WPA[1]="wpa_supplicant"
WLAN_WPADRIVER[1]="wext"

I would have thought the rate settings of 54 would be passed to iwconfig but they don't seem to be. Am I missing something ? BTW my hardware supports a 54Mb connection and entering the iwconfig command at the CLI seems to work as iwconfig then reports the new rate. Any ideas ?

Cheers

H_TeXMeX_H · 03-06-2007, 09:45 PM

"54M auto"

I really don't know too much about this ... but did you try just:

"54M"

?

bgeddy · 03-07-2007, 08:12 AM

Yep - tried that and other combinations of commenting out RATE or WLAN_RATE[1] but nothing seems to make a difference.

Hangdog42 · 03-07-2007, 01:06 PM

The bcm43xx driver can only handle 11M regardless of what the card is capable of. If you need 54M throughput, you'll have to move to ndiswrapper and a Windows driver.

bgeddy · 03-07-2007, 07:42 PM

Thanks - after much more messing about I now have ndiswrapper setup to load the bcmwl5.inf windows files and get a 54Mb connection. It looks like I have to stop the bcm43xx driver from loading to get this to work - is blacklisting the way to go with this ?

Thanks again....

Hangdog42 · 03-08-2007, 07:08 AM

Yeah, you'll have to blacklist bcm43xx. As you've seen, having both bcm43xx and ndiswrapper loaded at the same time causes trouble.