I recently upgraded my aging 802.11b wireless card to a WMP600N. I bought this as I had read that it worked with Linux.
It did indeed work out of the box but the problem is that it stops working after a few minutes. No more traffic flows over the network. Just trying to ping my router results in a Destination Host Unreachable message.
The syslog shows no indication that there has been any problem. The only way to address this is to reconnect to the wireless network using the network dropdown beside the clock. This high frequency of disconnection makes the system effectively unusable.
I have a dual-boot Ubuntu/Windows 7 system and the network connection is stable in Windows indicating that it is not an inherent problem with the hardware.
Diagnostic information
Here is some diagnostic information.
The output in the syslog when I reconnect to the wireless network is quite verbose so I have pasted it elsewhere. I didn't spot anything that hinted at the cause of the problem:
/var/log/kern.log contents (although this looks like it already exists in the syslog output above):
Output from dmesg:
Output from iwconfig:
lo no wireless extensions.
wlan1 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:"BTHomeHub2-Z924"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:24:17:64:B0:E1
Bit Rate=52 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=44/70 Signal level=-66 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:1020 Invalid misc:69 Missed beacon:0
eth0 no wireless extensions.
Output from ifconfig wlan1:
wlan1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 98:fc:11:e3:8a:51
inet addr:192.168.1.68 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::9afc:11ff:fee3:8a51/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:6729 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:6399 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:5345413 (5.3 MB) TX bytes:977231 (977.2 KB)
Output from lshw -C network:
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 Gigabit or Fast Ethernet
vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
logical name: eth0
version: b0
serial: 00:24:8c:29:a1:de
capacity: 1Gbit/s
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=ATL1E driverversion=1.0.0.7-NAPI firmware=L1e latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair
resources: irq:46 memory:fe8c0000-fe8fffff ioport:cc00(size=128)
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: RT2800 802.11n PCI
vendor: Ralink corp.
physical id: 1
bus info: pci@0000:06:01.0
logical name: wlan1
version: 00
serial: 98:fc:11:e3:8a:51
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rt2800pci driverversion=3.2.0-29-generic firmware=0.34 ip=192.168.1.68 latency=64 link=yes maxlatency=4 mingnt=2 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn
resources: irq:17 memory:febf0000-febfffff
From what I can find out, the card uses a Ralink RT2860 chip but Ubuntu is using an rt2800 driver:
burhan@ubuntu:~$ lsmod | grep rt2800
rt2800pci 18715 0
rt2800lib 58925 1 rt2800pci
crc_ccitt 12667 1 rt2800lib
rt2x00pci 14577 1 rt2800pci
rt2x00lib 51144 3 rt2800pci,rt2800lib,rt2x00pci
mac80211 506816 3 rt2800lib,rt2x00pci,rt2x00lib
eeprom_93cx6 12725 1 rt2800pci
Things I have tried
I have downloaded the RT2860 Linux drivers from the Ralink website but they are dated July 2010 and their instructions are non-trivial so I haven't attempted to use them yet.
Related questions
- rt2800 wireless keeps disconnecting (unanswered)
- Possibly related: Wireless suddenly dropping with a Ralink RT2870
