2 issues: Low bitrate & problems with linux-firmware 1.25

[ophilar]

Hi all,

I had an issue in which I could not connect to the network or frequent disconnects when using package linux-firmware=1.25. I had this on 2 different computers and 2 different networks. When I downgraded just this package to linux-firmware=1.24, all became stable and working, without issues. (I have dmesg logs showing a firmware issue on 1.25, and none on 1.24). I wonder if this is a bug in the 1.25 version.

I notice that on these 2 systems the bitrate is only 1 MBit, which is very low for the 802.11 g protocol with the rt73usb chipset. MS Windows on these systems and other computers in the area connect at 54 MBits, as it should.
How can I check the actual bitrate and increase it if I need to?

Thanks

[lmilano]

Re: 2 issues: Low bitrate & problems with linux-firmware 1.25

Hi,

For the bitrate, how did you determine the 1Mb you are mentioning? There are several monitoring widgets for plasma, some give you network transfer speeds. But you can also use this (which is a real world test)

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

What do you see when you compare windows and kubuntu?

[ophilar]

Re: 2 issues: Low bitrate & problems with linux-firmware 1.25

Hi lmilano

Thanks.

I meant the network speed, not the internet one. I got decent enough results from the site you mentioned, but it doesn't check the wireless network connection.
I based my estimate on the networkManager widget in plasma (It now shows 11MBit/s.

Windows states a 54MBit/s connection. I don't do network intensive operations much, so it is not much of a nuisance so far, but I think it might indicate a problem.

[lmilano]

Re: 2 issues: Low bitrate & problems with linux-firmware 1.25

I see. I'm a simple guy. I would just copy a very heavy file both in windows and linux through the WLAN and see how long it takes in each case, I would be surprised if the times were not really the same and there is some sort of a bug in how this info is displayed in one of the operating systems ...

[ophilar]

Re: 2 issues: Low bitrate & problems with linux-firmware 1.25

Simplicity is a great virtue. I had not thought of this experiment. I think I'll just skip it, since I have one Windows machine and one Linux machine and each is connected to a different WLAN (I use a repeater). So I think it would just be too complicated for something that's not such a nuisance in the end.

Maybe pinging the repeater can give some measure of that quantity?

[lmilano]

Re: 2 issues: Low bitrate & problems with linux-firmware 1.25

good idea, but nah, pinning will give you the latency, and you are really interested in throughput (roughly speaking, opposite forces -- all things equal, systems optimized for one tend to sacrifice the other)

[ophilar]

Re: 2 issues: Low bitrate & problems with linux-firmware 1.25

Well, I tested it by transferring from a computer with Windows connected to the main router through a cable to two other computers - Windows & Linux - connected by wifi to the repeater. These 2 were physically very close.

I got the about the same transfer speed, so I guess it is just a wrong representation of the bitrate by KNetworkManager or up.

Thanks. Sorry to trouble for nothing