which driver for Centrino N-1000 Wireless chip?

[konsultor]

Hi,
Have not been able to connect through Wi-Fi on a Toshiba Satellite with the Centrino N-1000 wireless chip under any mode other than wide open (no security, which is not acceptable). Intel's site for open source Linux drivers says there's a driver named iwlwifi that's included in the kernel since 2.6.34 (I'm at 2.6.37 with openSuse 11.4/32-bit). However, the default install puts the module iwlagn in place rather than iwlwifi. Has anyone with connection problems tried changing the driver module for this Wi-Fi chip? Is there any danger to the hardware? If not, I'm inclined to test the alternate driver since it is among the files in the distribution. To change via modprobe, the man pages (8) warns that a kernel may not allow changing modules. Can I make this module swap in openSuse?
Not having ventured this deep into configurations before, some additional questions:
--Is there any danger of permanent harm? That is, is it possible to create a problem that can't be solved by re-installing the OS?
--Is a reboot necessary? If not, is there a propagation delay before other components are aware of the new driver?
-- Should the network services be restarted (e.g., through Yast)? I'm assuming yes.
-- Is it possible that I'm missing something in the assignment of a key? The router wants a 64-character hex string for a key but "iwconfig wlan0 key xx...xx" returns an error: invalid argument.
Thanks in advance.

[caf4926]

Please take a look at this entire thread
Network issues on 12.1

[konsultor]

Thanks for pointing out that thread. I had found it earlier but thought I should be able to keep the 11n speed. But then some connectivity is better than none.
Strange, my installation of 11.4 doesn't have a file named 50-iwlagn but there is /etc/modprobe.d/50-iwagn.conf (no l/c L) that contains the one line about N capability: options iwlagn 11n_disable=0
Might you know if I should rename the .conf file to match the driver? Is there a tool to examine the Wi-Fi port to see if the change from 0 to 1 has taken effect?

[caf4926]

Please make sure you have installed

kernel-firmware

[konsultor]

Yast says kernel-firmware is installed.

[lwfinger]

On 03/16/2012 11:46 AM, konsultor wrote:

There is no requirement that the files in /etc/modprobe.d be named to match
drivers, as they are processed alphabetically. The convention is that the
special ones match the driver name as that helps keep them straight.

Why do you want to disable 802.11n mode? If your AP only handle 802.11g, then
the driver will only be able to go to 54 Mb/s.

[konsultor]

I don't want to disable 11n mode, but that is the essence of the solution described in the thread referred to by caf. Reportedly disabling N mode cured a similar problem with the Centrino Wi-Fi chip. Working at G level wouldn't be much of a handicap as my LAN is 100 Mbit/s.
Would still appreciate comments about the choice of wireless driver.

[lwfinger]

On 03/16/2012 12:36 PM, konsultor wrote:
>
> I don't want to disable 11n mode, but that is the essence of the
> solution described in the thread referred to by caf. Reportedly
> disabling N mode cured a similar problem with the Centrino Wi-Fi chip.
> Working at G level wouldn't be much of a handicap as my LAN is 100
> Mbit/s.
> Would still appreciate comments about the choice of wireless driver.

It got renamed.

[konsultor]

Wow! That's a good bit to learn. So there's no point in changing the driver module--it's the same thing.
Thankyou.

[konsultor]

openSuse 12.2 works as hoped. Thanks to developers.