James Turner wrote:
I've been trying to get my new ral(4) card to work like I would expect it
to. I've read through most if not all the talk on misc@ about running these
cards in hostap mode. I would really like to replace my wi(4), which
works really well, with my new ral(4) and enjoy 11g and later wpa.
Sadly, the performance is just not there in both 11b or 11g modes.
Some info, the ral(4) is a Gigabyte GN-WP01GS which is an RT2561S. My
basic hostname.ral0 reads: inet 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 NONE media
autoselect mode 11g mediaopt hostap nwid my_net nwkey secret chan 11.
I've enabled RAL_DEBUG in my kernel and selected one of the standard
channels with the highest power. This is on 4.2 -release + patches. If
anyone has any new or additional information that might be helpful I
would greatly appreciate it, otherwise I guess I'll stick to my trusted
wi(4).
I used to have terrible reception and connectivity with my ral(4) when
using OBSD4.0. It was always shutting down the interface, setting the
OACTIVE bit. There was a nice patch in 4.1 that fixed this issue and
upgrading almost eliminated my problems. I also determined that my
ral(4) had a crappy antenna. I used an antenna with a 2 foot pigtail in
order to get it up above my equipment. Then I built a parabolic shield
like the one found here: http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/.
After that, my WLAN works like a dream. I was so frustrated for such a
long time and was ready to go back to my Linksys wireless router.
However, a little troubleshooting, upgrading, and tweaking got
everything running like a champ.
I would say don't blame the OS. I have also had the experience that no
matter what I do the reception/connectivity just sucks. That has been my
experience with Planet Wireless NICs. I'm currently using LevelOne NICs
(PCI and PCcard) and I'm extremely satisfied. We also have Macs that
wirelessly stream video via 11g through the OpenBSD firewall and I've
never had a problem. I would know if there were issues because my
girlfriend would be bitching if she couldn't stream her shows.
I'd also like to note that antenna impedance matching can play a factor.
I've got a Planet Wireless antenna connected to the LevelOne NIC. I was
able to get higher signal strength on the LevelOne NIC with the Planet
W. antenna than with the original LevelOne antenna.
One other thing I noticed is that my 2.4GHz cordless phones reduced
signal for some NICs more than others. Try experimenting with different
channels.
Here is my LevelOne PCI card that I bought from NewEgg years ago:
ral0 at pci0 dev 12 function 0 "Ralink RT2561S" rev 0x00: irq 11,
address 00:11:6b:37:07:b2
ral0: MAC/BBP RT2661B, RF RT2527
-pachl
