# Wifi problem on Advent 9117



## Rancidelephant (Jun 1, 2010)

Hi there,

I have installed Ubuntu on my advent 9117 but the wifi doesn't work very well with the router. Firefox is very slow to load pages (always) and transmission works fast for a bit but then stops. Disconnecting and re-connecting doesn't seem to help but disableing networking and then re-enableing it seems to sort it out for a short time.

On a public login wifi network I can also get in my house firefox loads pages normally.

I have searched around for some drivers but can't find any linux specific ones. The only information I can find on the wifi card is that it is made by ralink but I can't find the part number. (The link in the sticky for hardware identification leads to a blank page)

I have a dual boot for XP set up too and that works fine.

Any ideas?

Thanks


----------



## wmorri (May 29, 2008)

Hi,

Welcome to TSF!!

Can you tell me more about what the wireless card is, and what the driver is that you are using. Also, can you go to http://www.speedtest.net/ and run a speed test so that I can see what type of speeds we are talking about. 

Cheers!


----------



## Rancidelephant (Jun 1, 2010)

Hi there, thanks for the welcome 

The speed test result for the house internet connection I want to use gives DL 1.37mb/s UL 0.01mb/s (!) and ping of 111ms. The public WiFi that I end up using because the house connection dies every 5 minutes gives DL 0.61 UL 0.13 and ping 111.

I'm not totally sure of the wireless card. All the information on the internet I could find just lists it as "ralink wireless lan" All the info seems to be the same as on this page --> http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/advent/laptop/9117.htm which just says 

Network Card	Realtek RTL8139/810x Family Fast Ethernet
RaLink Wireless Lan **

which I took to mean the wifi card was different to the ethernet card.

The driver it is using is rt73usb but I don't know how to find hardware information on linux ... I'm too used to windows, total linux noob 

[After reading I some more found hwinfo and get the following]

62: None 00.0: 1070a WLAN
[Created at net.124]
Unique ID: AYEt.QXn1l67RSa1
Parent ID: 7bWa.DE+rhRN2uU4
SysFS ID: /class/net/wlan0
SysFS Device Link: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb2/2-3/2-3:1.0
Hardware Class: network interface
Model: "WLAN network interface"
Driver: "rt73usb"
Driver Modules: "rt73usb"
Device File: wlan0
HW Address: 00:10:60:14:63:de
Link detected: yes
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #54 (WLAN controller)


#54 gives ...

54: USB 00.0: 0282 WLAN controller
[Created at usb.122]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_148f_2573_noserial_if0
Unique ID: 7bWa.DE+rhRN2uU4
Parent ID: pBe4.9T1GDCLyFd9
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb2/2-3/2-3:1.0
SysFS BusID: 2-3:1.0
Hardware Class: network
Model: "Ralink 802.11 bg WLAN"
Hotplug: USB
Vendor: usb 0x148f "Ralink Technology, Corp."
*Device: usb 0x2573 "802.11 bg WLAN"*
Revision: "0.01"
Driver: "rt73usb"
Driver Modules: "rt73usb"
Device File: wlan0
Features: WLAN
Speed: 480 Mbps
HW Address: 00:10:60:14:63:de
Link detected: yes
WLAN channels: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
WLAN frequencies: 2.412 2.417 2.422 2.427 2.432 2.437 2.442 2.447 2.452 2.457 2.462 2.467 2.472 2.484
WLAN encryption modes: WEP40 WEP104 TKIP CCMP
WLAN authentication modes: open sharedkey wpa-psk wpa-eap
Module Alias: "usb:v148Fp2573d0001dc00dsc00dp00icFFiscFFipFF"
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: rt2500usb is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe rt2500usb"
Driver Info #1:
Driver Status: rt73usb is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe rt73usb"
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #48 (Hub)


After a google around of rt73usb I am guessing this is a pretty standard driver. The ralink website lists one that has rt73 in the name on it's linux page here, it also has 2573 in it too --> http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=2

I'm gonna just have a bash with that one and see what happens ...


----------



## wmorri (May 29, 2008)

Hi,

Thanks for that information. I would like to know if you are using the hardware drivers that linux finds for you, or are you using opensource drivers?

Also, how far are you from the router? Do you have a lot of walls to go through or are you right next to it?

Cheers!


----------



## hal8000 (Dec 23, 2006)

There may be nothing wrong with the wireless setup.
It may be simply that a neighbour is using a similar or the same wireless channel.

Open a terminal and post the output of:
ifconfig
route -n

The last command should give the gateway address of your router. This will be
a class C , possibly 192.168.x.x

Then post the output of the following
ping -c4 192.168.x.x

where 192.168.x.x is the gateway address in route -n

The ping should return all latencies under 5ms (ideally 1 ms).
If any pings exceed this then you need to allocate a different wireless channel.

The alternative is to try a long ethernet cable, if browsing becomes fast and efficient on ethernet then you have proved a wireless problem.


----------



## Rancidelephant (Jun 1, 2010)

Hi guys,

I am using the drivers linux finds, I coldn't find any others to play with.

The ping results are as follows.

PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=3.24 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=2.95 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=3.46 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=2.80 ms

--- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3004ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.804/3.116/3.466/0.258 ms

I spent a long time playing around last night with terminal and generally learning what bits do and trying to install some other drivers etc to sort the problem. Everything I tried to install seemed to have a problem that required me to install something else first ...

Eventually I gave up and tried installing Chrome ... which works perfectly everywhere. So the problem seems to be with firefox ... it is up to date and I looked through the network settings for anything wierd that may be causing a problem but I couldn't find anything.

Any suggestions?

Also installing Chrome seems to have made firefox work slightly better (but still pretty terribly) and the bittorrent client now downloads at a constant high speed. Is there something in the installer that changes a setting?

Thanks for your help guys.


----------

