From owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Fri May 1 03:44:30 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D98B6106564A for ; Fri, 1 May 2009 03:44:30 +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 645D88FC19 for ; Fri, 1 May 2009 03:44:30 +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 n3UN52aK016095 for ; Fri, 1 May 2009 01:05:02 +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 2009050101051069:161553 ; Fri, 1 May 2009 01:05:10 +0200 Message-ID: <49FA2E3F.9050108@entel.upc.edu> Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 01:03:27 +0200 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Gustau_P=E9rez?= User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (X11/20090409) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org X-MIMETrack: Itemize by SMTP Server on hamilton/UPC(Release 5.0.12 |February 13, 2003) at 01/05/2009 01:05:11, Serialize by Router on hamilton/UPC(Release 5.0.12 |February 13, 2003) at 01/05/2009 01:05:11, Serialize complete at 01/05/2009 01:05:11 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]); Fri, 01 May 2009 01:05:03 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Signal sensitivity problem with if_rum X-BeenThere: freebsd-net@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Networking and TCP/IP with FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 03:44:31 -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 both usb devices 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 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). So : In the linux world, I found that the register which controls the sensitivity is bbp17 : http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:H8W6R5Ds3mYJ:forum.aircrack-ng.org/index.php%3Ftopic%3D2235.0+bbp17+ralink+linux&cd=1&hl=ca&ct=clnk&gl=es&client=firefox-a Tried looking in /usr/src/sys/dev/usb/wlan/if_rum.c, but I got lost. Tried with sysctl -a | grep rum or grep wlan0, but no MiB related to sensitivity appeared. Is there anything I can try ? How can I force bbp 17 to get 0 value ? Tried with rum_def_bbp in if_rum.c, changing 17 to 0. No luck. Regards, Gus