From owner-freebsd-usb@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Apr 26 19:05:27 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-usb@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AFA5F106564A for ; Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:05:27 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gperez@entel.upc.edu) Received: from violet.upc.es (violet.upc.es [147.83.2.51]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3FC058FC08 for ; Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:05:27 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gperez@entel.upc.edu) Received: from hamilton.upcnetadm.upcnet.es (hamilton.upcnetadm.upcnet.es [147.83.2.240]) by violet.upc.es (8.14.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id n3QJ5GbG010849 for ; Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:05:16 +0200 Received: from [192.168.100.184] ([88.15.98.27]) by hamilton.upcnetadm.upcnet.es (Lotus Domino Release 5.0.12) with ESMTP id 2009042621052344:118430 ; Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:05:23 +0200 Message-ID: <49F4B018.1000703@entel.upc.edu> Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:03:52 +0200 From: Gustau Perez User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (X11/20090409) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-usb@freebsd.org X-MIMETrack: Itemize by SMTP Server on hamilton/UPC(Release 5.0.12 |February 13, 2003) at 26/04/2009 21:05:23, Serialize by Router on hamilton/UPC(Release 5.0.12 |February 13, 2003) at 26/04/2009 21:05:25, Serialize complete at 26/04/2009 21:05:25 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed X-Mail-Scanned: Criba 2.0 + Clamd X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-3.0 (violet.upc.es [147.83.2.51]); Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:05:16 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Signal sensitivity problem with if_rum X-BeenThere: freebsd-usb@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD support for USB List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:05:27 -0000 Hi, I think this is right place to post, if it is not, please let me know. I'm experiencing problems with two different devices using if_rum. One is a Hercules Guillemot and the other is a Linksys Cisco WUSB54GC The first one is about sensitivity, which is very low: for example, I'm detecting just two or three networks around me (with windows them detect around 14 or 15 networks) and the reported signal is very low. Placing the sensor very near to my wireless network AP (which is a FreeBSD machine with atheros card placing the txpower to 20) reports a signal quality of 50% or 60%. Linux presents the same problem (my wife's laptop with ubuntu shows the same figures, more or less). Instead with windows it works just fine. The other one is that having such a low sensitivity makes those dongles unusable when making large transfers, mostly when using scp/sftp or sshfs (samba seems to make it work better for longer transfer, but finally the problem appears). At some given point, the dongles seem to lose contact with the AP (making ifconfig shows that wlan0 is still associated), waiting for a period of time (usually one or two minutes) the transfer continues. Probably both problems are related. In order to debug the problem I tried looking dmesg in both my AP and my laptop (no trace). Tried looking at the ssh logs (when making large transfers, no clue). In the only place I found something was in the samba logs, only saying that there was a problem with the transfer (broken pipe, the socket is closed). In the linux world, I found that the register which controls the sensitivity is bbp17. Tried looking in /usr/src/sys/dev/usb/wlan/if_rum.c, but I get lost. Tried with sysctl -a | grep rum or grep wlan0, but no MiB related to sensitivity appeared. Is there anything I can try ? Regards, Gus