Wifi issues, massive packet loss

[kylegio]

Hello.

I have been struggling with a massive packet loss issue, at the best its about 5%, at its worse its 100%.

This issue was found when i was using ubuntu and persists with fedora.
The laptop is a brand new sager laptop, using fedora 16, fully up to date.

Heres some profile information about the wireless card:

id: network
description: Wireless interface
product: RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:08:00.0
logical name: wlan0
version: 01
serial: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration:
broadcast = yes
driver = rtl8192ce
driverversion = 3.1.0-7.fc16.x86_64
firmware = N/A
ip = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
latency = 0
link = yes
multicast = yes
wireless = IEEE 802.11bgn
resources:
irq : 18
ioport : 3000(size=256)
memory : f2d00000-f2d03fff


The issue is not limited to my home network (so it is not a wireless AP issue), it is worst at school which is using WPA2 enterprise/ PEAP/ MSCHAPv2 The packet loss is so severe that 9 times out of 10 i fail to authenticate making it completely un-usable to me...I feel like this MIGHT be a driver issue? maybe not... i am not sure what i should try. I tried grabbing the newest drivers off realteks website but they wouldn't compile


Does anyone have a suggestion at all? i am desperate because without wireless the laptop is more or less useless. I would very much appreciate any advice

thanks in advance
kyle

[JEO]

When the built-in linux wireless driver does not offer a reliable connection you can blacklist that driver, and use ndiswrapper with the windows XP version of the driver. You have to compile the ndiswrapper program and kernel module first (you can get the latest stable version from its source on the internet using the git command). If you don't know the procedure try searching with google or if you still can't figure it out post here again.

[kylegio]

Hi thanks for the suggestion, i had not thought of that

i have used ndiswrapper in the past a long time ago... i am not really that up to date on the workings of it...

i have loosely followed
http://fedoramobile.org/fc-wireless/ndis-yum-livna

[root@kage-laptop ndiswrapper_drivers]# ndiswrapper -i net8192ce.inf 
installing net8192ce ...
[root@kage-laptop ndiswrapper_drivers]# ndiswrapper -l
net8192ce : driver installed
	device (10EC:8176) present (alternate driver: rtl8192ce)
[root@kage-laptop ndiswrapper_drivers]# modprobe ndiswrapper 
[root@kage-laptop ndiswrapper_drivers]# dmesg | grep ndis
[ 1009.974343] ndiswrapper version 1.57rc1 loaded (smp=yes, preempt=no)
[ 1009.981263] usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper
[root@kage-laptop ndiswrapper_drivers]# ndiswrapper -ma
module configuration information is stored in /etc/modules.conf

and i can blacklist the current driver by adding
blacklist rtl8192ce
to the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf


the issue is that with the current driver disabled, it doesn't recognize the card at all... no mention of it anywhere. it is certainly not picking up any of the ndiswrapper stuff.

Any thoughts? things i have completely missed?

thanks
kyle

[JEO]

Did you rmmod the blacklisted driver or reboot? If that driver is loaded before ndiswrapper it will prevent ndiswrapper from being able to access the wifi card.

[kylegio]

i did not do so,
im having trouble figuring out exactly what i should do. like is it "rmmod rtl8192ce"

and also, lets assume this does not work... which will leave me without any wireless at all, what is the command to undo that and re-enable it if i have to?


thanks again!

[JEO]

I would also like to see everything in /var/log/messages at the time you modprobe ndiswapper, not just the grep lines.

---------- Post added at 10:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:44 PM ----------

To undo the changes and go back to the native driver just remove the "blacklist rtl8192ce" and get rid of the /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper.conf file and reboot.

Yes to remove the module just type "rmmod rtl8192ce"

If you don't want to reboot then you would also rmmod ndiswrapper and then modprobe ndiswrapper.

[kylegio]

var/log/messages is over a thousand lines long...

the tail doesnt show any change after i modprobe ndiswrapper, its just showing dhcp leases and network manager stuff for the current wlan0 connection. is there something specific you are looking for?


there is also no /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper.conf file, should there be?

this was written to the /etc/modules.conf file

alias pci:v000010ECd00008176sv00000315sd00001A32bc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008176sv00001139sd00001A3Bbc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008176sv00001629sd0000103Cbc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008176sv0000169Fsd0000103Cbc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008176sv000016B3sd000010CFbc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
.....etc.....
alias pci:v000010ECd00008176sv00009203sd000010ECbc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008176sv00009204sd000010ECbc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008176sv*sd*bc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008177sv*sd*bc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008178sv00001178sd00001A3Bbc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008178sv00001400sd00001B9Abc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
.....etc.....
alias pci:v000010ECd00008178sv000084B6sd00001043bc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008178sv00009178sd000010ECbc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008178sv00009179sd00001025bc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008178sv00009180sd00001025bc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008178sv*sd*bc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias pci:v000010ECd00008191sv*sd*bc*sc*i* ndiswrapper
alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

i am going to try what you have suggested, see if that gets me anywhere

[JEO]

/etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf are deprecated file locations. The new version of ndiswrapper that you can checkout using git and compile creates an /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper.conf file with the aliases in it when you do the "ndiswrapper -ma" command.

[kylegio]

i will pull the latest from git.

after rmmod the old driver and modprobe ndiswrapper this is what showed in the messages log.

Nov 25 03:16:15 kage-laptop kernel: [  537.621152] ndiswrapper version 1.57rc1 loaded (smp=yes, preempt=no)
Nov 25 03:16:15 kage-laptop udevd[3389]: setfilecon /dev/ndiswrapper failed: No such file or directory
Nov 25 03:16:15 kage-laptop loadndisdriver: loadndisdriver: load_driver(364): couldn't load driver net8192ce
Nov 25 03:16:15 kage-laptop kernel: [  537.626408] ndiswrapper (import:232): unknown symbol: ntoskrnl.exe:'IoWMIQueryAllData'
Nov 25 03:16:15 kage-laptop kernel: [  537.626415] ndiswrapper (import:232): unknown symbol: ntoskrnl.exe:'IoWMIOpenBlock'
Nov 25 03:16:15 kage-laptop kernel: [  537.626521] ndiswrapper (load_sys_files:206): couldn't prepare driver 'net8192ce'
Nov 25 03:16:15 kage-laptop kernel: [  537.626962] ndiswrapper (load_wrap_driver:108): couldn't load driver net8192ce; check system log for messages from 'loadndisdriver'
Nov 25 03:16:15 kage-laptop kernel: [  537.628295] usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper

[JEO]

For the unknown symbol ntoskrnl.exe errors when you modprobe ndiswrapper are you sure you installed the Windows XP version of the driver .inf file and not the Windows Vista or Windows 7 version? If you used the correct file then switching to the git version of ndiswrapper may fix those errors also.

[kylegio]

yes, i tried a few different ones, using a windows 7 or vista driver gives pages of errors...
using the XP driver complains that its not 64 bit, using the Windows xp64 driver gives me that... its the fewest errors of any driver ive tried.

where is the git repo for ndiswrapper? i only find their stuff on sourceforge, latest there is 1.57RC1 which i have installed.

I really appreciate you taking the time to help me with this!

[stevea]

What are the interface stats ? what does
ip -s link
report ?

[JEO]

I just compiled the svn (did I say git?) version myself on Fedora 16. Strange I had to remove a line 311 in ntoskernel.h that said "#error 1" to get it to compile. I also had to move the module aliases file from /etc/modules.conf to /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper.conf The command I used to get it was:

svn co https://ndiswrapper.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ndiswrapper/trunk ndiswrapper

I see ndiswrapper version 1.57rc1 when I modprobe. I am using the 32 bit version of Fedora 16. So that might be the difference. Someone else in the past had trouble with the 64 bit version and ndiswrapper.

[kylegio]

no luck on using the latest version off svn, it doesn't seem any different.

it also still wants to use /etc/modules.conf, i can manually move it.

When doing this packet loss after transmitting about 80 packets was about 2%, which is the best it gets...ever its usually much higher.

# ip -s link
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN 
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    RX: bytes  packets  errors  dropped overrun mcast   
    1324       16       0       0       0       0      
    TX: bytes  packets  errors  dropped carrier collsns 
    1324       16       0       0       0       0      
2: p3p1: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state DOWN qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:90:f5:bc:95:cf brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    RX: bytes  packets  errors  dropped overrun mcast   
    52911813   41304    0       3       0       107    
    TX: bytes  packets  errors  dropped carrier collsns 
    3447485    29096    0       0       0       0      
4: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP qlen 1000
    link/ether e0:b9:a5:b2:f1:7e brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    RX: bytes  packets  errors  dropped overrun mcast   
    91049671   70406    0       0       0       0      
    TX: bytes  packets  errors  dropped carrier collsns 
    7804075    44206    0       0       0       0

[JEO]

That whole thing about putting the module aliases in the wrong location seems to be due to the new kernel versioning. ndiswrapper is a perl script:

if (`uname -r` =~ /(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)/) {
    if ($2 > 4) {
	if (-d "/etc/modprobe.d") {
	    $modconf = "/etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper.conf";
	} else {
	    $modconf = "/etc/modprobe.conf";
	}
    } else {
	if (-d "/etc/modutils") {
	    $modconf = "/etc/modutils/ndiswrapper";
	} else {
	    $modconf = "/etc/modules.conf";
	}
    }
}

And of course the other part that wouldn't compile is that #error 1 line I mentioned earlier, also right after a kernel version check in ntoskernel.h

So it seems the svn trunk is really in a transitional state to supporting the new kernel versions and that explains the weirdness.