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Date:      Sun, 19 Jan 2003 19:46:11 -0800
From:      "Sam Leffler" <sam@errno.com>
To:        "Matt Haught" <haughtlists@hotmail.com>, <freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: new wi0 slowness
Message-ID:  <308001c2c036$79773e20$5a557f42@errno.com>
References:  <OE15xdJXNMZaxSFoH6o0001009e@hotmail.com>

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> I have noticed the following with the new wi0.  I have the 802.11
connection
> between my laptop running XP and my current box running as a hostap.  I
also
> have a IPSec tunnel between the current box and the laptop, but I don't
> think this could be causing the problems.
> While transferring files from samba on the current box to the laptop I got
> the following results:
>
> With the old wi0:
>   average 5120.3Kb/s
>   peak     7326.5Kb/s
>   With top -S
>     85% interrupt
>     cpu - 58%  swi1: net
>              21.8% irq10: wi0
>
> With the new wi0:
>   average 877.0Kb/s
>   peak     902.4Kb/s
>   With top -S
>     11.6% interrupt
>     cpu - 9%  swi1: net
>              0.88% irq10: wi0
>
> I am also getting hundreds of: "wi0: tx failed, retry limit exceeded" with
> the new driver under heavy load.  In addition it get many random
disconnects
> which I would not notice, except AIM gets logged out.  I don't think it
has
> anything to do with the ipsec tunnel as the SAD entries are still there
and
> it only happen with the new wi kernel.  I have tried FAST_IPSEC and it
does
> work with the new wi0 driver where it would temporarily lock up the
machine
> with the old one, but I'm not using it since I thought it may be causing a
> problem and its ends up that it did not make a difference.  I am going to
> try it later without IPSec just to be sure.
>

Ignore IPsec; in fact don't configure it.

I just changed the default setting of kern.wi_txerate to 0 to suppress
printing tx error messages; do likewise:

sysctl kern.wi_txerate=0

This is the way the old driver worked.

> Under the new driver my card which sold as a D-link DWL-520 2.4GHz
Wireless
> PCI card is shown as a:
> dmesg ....
> wi0: <Intersil Prism2.5> mem 0xe6000000-0xe6000fff irq 10 at device 15.0
on
> pci0
> wi0: 802.11 address: 00:05:5d:fa:0e:b0
> wi0: using RF:PRISM2.5 MAC:ISL3874A(Mini-PCI)
> wi0: Intersil Firmware: Primary (1.0.7), Station (1.3.6)
> wi0: supported rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps
> ....
> I can change the media through ifconfig to DS/11Mbps or whatever, but it
> does not seem to change anything other then ifconfig will show "media:
IEEE
> 802.11 Wireless Ethernet DS/11Mbps <hostap> (DS/2Mbps <hostap>)" rather
then
> autoselect.  The same slowness is still there.  wicontrol shows it as
having
> a TX rate (actual speed) of 2 no matter what.  I can set the (selection)
to
> anything such as 11, and again no change in the throughput or anything.  I
> have also changed things with the old driver, and nothing changed with the
> throughput, and it also shows the (actual speed) as 2 but I get higher
> throughput.  It seems to kinda have a mind of its own.  Well if you need
> anymore info, just drop me a message.  I enabled debugging for wi0 as a
> earlier post showed, but I had no idea what I was looking at :).
>

You've said nothing about how your interface is configured except that it's
running in hostap mode; start by giving the output of ifconfig wi0.  The
output of netstat -i might indicate the error rate on your Dlink card (tx
errors show up as output errors).

Finally, you may want to try different station firmware in your Dlink card.
I run 1.4.9 in my Senao (Prism 2.5) cards with good success.  I don't recall
whether there were issues with 1.3.6 (I know some of the intermediate
versions had problems especially in hostap mode).  You can get 1.4.9
firmware at http://www.netgate.com/support/prism_firmware/.

    Sam


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