How to use compat-wireless ?

English Network/Internet
#1

I have an HP DV7 laptop with AR928X Wireless Network Adaptor.
Running 11.2.
Wireless link was fine for 802.11G, but very flaky when I tried to move to 802.11N.

I have downloaded the most recent compat-wireless for my kernel.

How does one replace the “stock” version of ath9k with the new one, or does it happen “automagically” ?
Need to reboot?

Thanks

#2

Sure it’s the driver that’s causing it?

#3

Sure ? - no, not really.
But I have seen several threads with similar issues and suggestions to use compat-wireless versions of the drivers.

The early results - after reboot, look very promising.
NetManager, at least, now reporting same operational rates as the wireles router (running dd-wrt).

I did not try rmmod then modprobe, but did compare the results from

lsmod |grep ath9

and could see that the reboot loaded the new driver set, a total of six modules.

#4

For those who might be interested:
The compat-wireless version of the ath9K driver does seem to improve performance and interface to Network Manager.
The stock 11.2 ath9k driver was reporting 1Mbps when associated with an 802.11N Access point. It seemed to be performing at about that rate as well- pretty bad.

Once compat-wirless installed, Network manager reported 270Mbps link, as did the AP (running DD-WRT). I had selected 40MHz bandwidth.

A file transfer across my network, the rest of which is 1000Mbps ethernet, via Samba, yielded peak transfer rates around 21Mbps.

Backing the AP down to 802.11G, same transfer, yielded peak 16Mbps.

Connecting the DV7 to the server via 100Mbps ethernet through a GigE switch yielded peak transfer rates around 20Mbps as well.

Perhaps there is a bottleneck in the DV7.

I highly recommend loading the compat-wireless version of ath9k for this laptop.
In another thread, you will find that I also downloaded the R8101 NIC driver as well.
Both these driver work better with NetworkManager than the stock 11.2 drivers

#5

On 03/21/2010 09:06 AM, cmcgrath5035 wrote:
>
> I highly recommend loading the compat-wireless version of ath9k for
> this laptop.
> In another thread, you will find that I also downloaded the R8101 NIC
> driver as well.
> Both these driver work better with NetworkManager than the stock 11.2
> drivers

The Atheros developers are working very hard to improve their drivers. Good to
see results.