Wireless on some networks unstable

[tweev]

This is kind of a weird problem. My wireless works fine on some networks but on my home especially, it is very unstable and causes my laptop to crash (esp. firefox). Strange that it works great on some and craps out on others.

Any ideas?

*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:12:00.0
logical name: wlan0
version: 01
serial: c0:cb:38:01:6a:0f
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=brcm80211 driverversion=2.6.38-8-generic-pae firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn
resources: irq:17 memory:fb300000-fb303fff

[wizard10000]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

Yup. Pitch network-manager and install wicd.

That's pretty much our standard answer these days as network-manager is just awful.

[tweev]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

Great. i will give this a go tonight and let you know how it works out. Thanks!

[tweev]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

wiz

how do I 'pitch' network-manager?

thx!
Carl

[GreyGeek]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

First, install every package with "wicd" in its name -- usually around 5 to 7.
Then, completely remove everything with network-manager in its name.
Reboot.
In a Konsole: sudo apt-get autoremove.

There are several posts on the topic of replacing KNetworkManager with wicd. A lot of people make the mistake of removing KNetwork Manager first, then discover they've lost their wireless connection because there is no other wireless configuration software if one doesn't know how to manually use the underlying wireless network configuration utilities.

I like wicd because it doesn't need KDE to be installed before it can be run. Wicd itself runs a GUI from the KDE desktop. From a console, with or without KDE running, one can run
wicd-curses
and have a console based interface to configure networks.

[tweev]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

Sorry it took me so long to get to it. I did as you suggested but no luck. Firefox and other programs crash when I am on wireless on my home network (I should try wired).

Weird thing is that wireless seems to work OK on some networks (when I was recently traveling it was fine on the hotel wireless networks) but at home it's all crap. I have a Dell Vostro which has a broadcom card which I suspect is the issue. That, AND, our wireless transmitter is a apple time capsule.

Any more ideas? Thanks for the help.
Carl.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

I don't have that driver on my system.

What does
modinfo brcm80211
show?

[tweev]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

Hey GG,

Thanks for the help. Sorry about taking so long to get back, I'm on my linux at work and stuck in windows at home. It's frustrating.

Here is the information you requested. Thanks again.

filename: /lib/modules/2.6.38-8-generic-pae/kernel/drivers/staging/brcm80211/brcm80211.ko
license: Dual BSD/GPL
description: Broadcom 802.11n wireless LAN driver.
author: Broadcom Corporation
srcversion: 0039D58F094F7B0F75BAA6B
alias: pci:v000014E4d00004727sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias: pci:v000014E4d00004353sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias: pci:v000014E4d00004357sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
depends: mac80211,cfg80211
staging: Y
vermagic: 2.6.38-8-generic-pae SMP mod_unload modversions 686
parm: msglevel:int
parm: phymsglevel:int

[GreyGeek]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

....
Weird thing is that wireless seems to work OK on some networks (when I was recently traveling it was fine on the hotel wireless networks) but at home it's all crap. .....

The parms that modinfo showed:

parm: msglevel:int
parm: phymsglevel:int

are not of any value to your problem.

Are there other access points within 300 feet of your wireless? "iwlist scanning" should list them all AND the channel they are using. See if any are using the same channel you are. If one is then use iwconfig (with sudo) to change the channel number to an unused one.

[tweev]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to this. I'm annoyingly using windows exclusively at home and I hate it. At least I get to use my linux side at work!

Anyway, I changed the channel of the Time-capsule to an unused one and still no difference. It connects fine, even dropbox seems OK, but when I boot up firefox, it chokes and closes. I've tried chrome and it starts to have problems pretty soon after I open it as well.

Do you think it could be the broadcom driver?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

So, you are not having channel problems, and chrome does it too, after a while.

That your browsing works well everywhere but at home suggests that your wireless router configuration may be at fault, or your ISP has some problems. What is the bandwidth of your Internet connection at home? Has your ISP overbooked the trunk segment you are on? Kismet or Nagios may help answer these questions.

Some possible FF configuration helps:
Do you have pipelining setup? (put about:config in the URL and then in the search box which appears enter pipe).

If you do, are all of them set to true and is "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" set equal to or larger than the usually number of tabs you open up?

I run FF 3.6.1pre and I find it to be a work in progress. First, when I start it, and after it appears on the screen, there is a 5 second or so delay before the cursor will display a hand & finger in order to click on a link or enter something in a text box. After that, most of the time it runs fine, except for sites like this forum. In this forum, for no apparent reason (and no traces of problems in the logs), FF will simply refuse to respond to a mouse click on any control of the displayed web page. The FF controls respond. I can switch web sites, but when I come back to this forum most of the time it fails to respond. I can open a Konsole and ping the kubuntuforum.net server and get 72 ms response times, but no HTML action. IF I close FF and reopen it and return to this forum it responds again. Personally, I believe it is an SMF-FF hand shaking problem, but it will go away sometime soon because we are changing to a new host provider and a new forum engine.

[Teunis]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

I have a hard time believing a bad WIFI would cause a browser to crash.
Yes you can play with different browsers like Konqueror and Reconq.

I once had a similar problem and at the time it was the WPA security causing issues, you could try with a different security model, even with WEP although that isn't very secure you could run it long enough to see if it makes a difference.

[tweev]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

I think I may have jumped the gun a bit. Wireless was working reasonably well when I was traveling and staying at hotels. The wireless (at least when using browsers) crashes when I'm at home. I just tried it here at work on the wireless and it too seems to cause this crashing issue.

Seems to me it must be the wireless driver. Don't you think?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

...
Wireless was working reasonably well when I was traveling and staying at hotels.

The wireless (at least when using browsers) crashes when I'm at home.

This suggests that your wireless router at home isn't working right since you say your PC wireless chip and brcm driver worked well at other sites.

I just tried it here at work on the wireless and it too seems to cause this crashing issue.

Seems to me it must be the wireless driver. Don't you think?

When you join your PC to your workplace wireless network the problem resumes?

The results are contradictory. What is your wireless router at home ... and at work?

[tweev]

Re: Wireless on some networks unstable

Hey,

Sorry, I was a little confused. I upgraded to 11.04 just before going on a trip. After I installed it I started getting these crashing issues at home. When traveling, I could connect to the hotel wireless and things seems fine (So I thought it was my router).

I'm usually plugged in at work but this past weekend I had a bit of time to test some things so I tried logging onto the wireless at work. Here, I also got the odd crashing issues (to my surprise). I was with you that what I had tried (and told you), it did seem to be my router. I don't think so anymore. Thanks for your patience.