Low TX rate (1 Mbps) from hostap 0.3.7 to prism2_usb (subversion r1715)

[Chris Rankin]

Hi,

I am running hostap 0.3.7 on a Netgear MA301 PLX adapter, and I am noticing that the transfer rate
from the hostap device to my prism2_usb device keeps dropping to 1 Mbps. For example, I have
FTP'ed a file back and forth across the link:

ftp> put tv_future_640_dl.zip tv.zip
local: tv_future_640_dl.zip remote: tv.zip
227 Entering Passive Mode (192,168,1,1,83,156)
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for tv.zip.
226 Transfer complete.
5132250 bytes sent in 19.4 secs (2.6e+02 Kbytes/sec)

ftp> get tv.zip get.zip
local: get.zip remote: tv.zip
227 Entering Passive Mode (192,168,1,1,92,188)
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for tv.zip (5132250 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
5132250 bytes received in 203 secs (25 Kbytes/sec)

As you can see, transmitting *to* the hostap device is about 10 times faster than receiving *from*
the hostap device. According to the hostap logs, the TX rate is constantly being raised and then
lowered again to 10. This is what iwconfig has to say:

wifi0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"xxxxxxxxxx"  Nickname:"xxxxxxxxxx"
          Mode:Master  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
          Bit Rate:1 Mb/s   Sensitivity=1/3
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:5711  Invalid misc:1792   Missed beacon:0
                                                                                
Obviously the numbers of "excessive retries" and "invalid misc" worry me. However, the prism2_usb
driver actually has quite a fast RX path. I certainly didn't have this problem when I was using
prism2_plx and linked my two machines via Ad-Hoc mode.

I am running 128 bit WEP in hardware.

hostap machine:
Linux 2.4.29, Pentium 120MHz, Netgear MA301, Firmware 0.3.0/1.7.1

prism2_usb machine:
Linux 2.6.11, Pentium2 350 MHz, Actiontec USB, Firmware 1.1.2/1.8.3

Does anyone else see anything like this, please?

Cheers,
Chris


Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com