Painfully slow WIFI

[dan]

So, both my brother and i own Pandora.


I love my Pandora for gaming and such but the WiFi is a real problem for me.


I have 13mb/s internet at my house on an N speed router and a separate G speed router,


and my Pandora only gets 50 kb/s TOPS, I've tried different settings and routers,


and even at friends houses/internet cafes.


I think id rather use an external WiFi card, but all i have is a NETGEAR N150, WNA1100


and I cannot find any drivers on this site(not that i expected to) but i cannot find any Linux drivers at all.


Can anyone ether find/make me drivers/recommend a different cheap card(not the Linksys AE100 as it's kind of expensive)/or give me some info?


Thanks

 

[zowki]

not the Linksys AE100 as it's kind of expensive

You can get the Linksys AE100 on ebay for around $25. Its the most widely tested USB Wi-Fi device on the Pandora with a PND driver already available.

 

[dan]

not the Linksys AE100 as it's kind of expensive

You can get the Linksys AE100 on ebay for around $25. Its the most widely tested USB Wi-Fi device on the Pandora with a PND driver already available.

yes i know i could get one on ebay ( i meant in store there are expensive like $60) but id rather at least have someone help with the WiFi receiver i already own


but thank you

 

[zowki]

I'm afraid theres nothing that can be done apart from using a USB Wi-Fi device. In my opinion, the developers should have chosen a higher performance Wifi chip.

 

[dan]

actually just found steps for making the adapter work in Ubuntu


http://www.scribd.com/doc/55411639/Wna1100-Howto


would i be able to port this over to Pandora or is it non-compatable with ARM

 

[cinaed666]

If your connection is slow, you chould try changing the channel of your WLAN to a higher value. You do this by going to your router's IP and changing the settings of your wireless network.

 

[ChaosWarmech]

If your connection is slow, you chould try changing the channel of your WLAN to a higher value. You do this by going to your router's IP and changing the settings of your wireless network.

I tried that, and it didn't help at all..

 

[dan]

If your connection is slow, you chould try changing the channel of your WLAN to a higher value. You do this by going to your router's IP and changing the settings of your wireless network.

I tried that, and it didn't help at all..

didn't help for me either

 

[ChaosWarmech]

How the hell!


I just ran speedtest.net and got .22Mbps Download and 1.18Mbps Upload. Why is the upload faster??


edit: I tried "sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off" and got .42Mbps DL and 1.59Mbps UL.


This eats battery though. I was at 62% and I went from 7hrs down to 4. Actually, with full brightness it eats it faster than the charger charges it...


I also installed aircrack-ng and used airodump-ng to see what channels other routers in range were using. Ours was 11 all the others were either 6 or 1... Shouldn't be a problem with the channel.


However, I did try out channels 8 5 3 and 1; there was very little difference. I'll start running speedtests on other networks from now on to see how it varies.

 

[zowki]

I just ran speedtest.net and got .22Mbps Download and 1.18Mbps Upload. Why is the upload faster??

I don't remember the exact numbers and I can't test again right now since I only have Wifi in school but I vividly remember that my upload was indeed faster on my Pandora too.


How could the Pandora devs chose such a lousy wifi chip? They should have chosen a reasonable b/g/n wifi chip that already has proper Linux drivers written for it. It doesn't even support adhoc networks for goodness sake! If I had the skills, I would desolder the chip and replace it with the one used in the Linksys AE1000.

 

[darfgarf]

How could the Pandora devs chose such a lousy wifi chip? They should have chosen a reasonable b/g/n wifi chip that already has proper Linux drivers written for it. It doesn't even support adhoc networks for goodness sake! If I had the skills, I would desolder the chip and replace it with the one used in the Linksys AE1000.

obviously you don't have the 'skills' then, as building somethign as complex as the pandora is a ridiculous amount of work

 

[MarioPandio]

Its a shame that some users have found poor wifi abilities with the Pandora but unless I'm mistaken the wifi chip itself is a well known one in other devices isnt it? On that basis its just as I said a shame that some Pandoras seem to hate some routers, so much. The Pandora is a truly complicated piece of hardware though that few companies can manufacture let alone design and fit in such a small box and perhaps the reason will be found eventually or a replacement chip be used in future builds but i dont feel its any fault of OPT. I believe they went with a fairly known product and for some reason its being a pain in the ass. I stand to be corrected on that of course.


With regards the folks with slow wifi, have you yet tried switching the encryption methods WEP/WPA etc and also switching from TKIP to AES protocols or vice versa? Made a big difference for myself. Have you also tried the HF5 beta driver from notaz, as well as the default?

 

[WizardStan]

How could the Pandora devs chose such a lousy wifi chip?

It's the exact same chip as in the N900 :blink: (or was it the N800? One of the Nokia tablets, anyway)


All dev units functioned perfectly. The three Pandoras I've had the fortune of using have worked perfectly. A lot of people have absolutely no complaints about the wifi. It's worrying that there are a large number with wifi problems, but I don't think OPT can be blamed for choosing a lousy wifi chip.

 

[DavidBowman]

My wifi is very slow as well, regardless of which router I'm using. I always assumed that it was the drivers not being in a state of maturity just yet.


Stan, are you saying that your Pandoras have had wifi that has been quick?

 

[WizardStan]

Stan, are you saying that your Pandoras have had wifi that has been quick?

300kbps steady with my old router, jumped to 600kbps when I got a new router. At least on one of them. The other two aren't mine so I haven't had the chance to do any in depth tests, but they were acceptably quick to surf.

 

[zowki]

How could the Pandora devs chose such a lousy wifi chip?

It's the exact same chip as in the N900 :blink: (or was it the N800? One of the Nokia tablets, anyway)


All dev units functioned perfectly. The three Pandoras I've had the fortune of using have worked perfectly. A lot of people have absolutely no complaints about the wifi. It's worrying that there are a large number with wifi problems, but I don't think OPT can be blamed for choosing a lousy wifi chip.

I'm surprised the owners of the dev units were not troubled by the lack of adhoc connectivity.

 

[WizardStan]

It was known that ad hoc wasn't available. It wasn't necessary for most purposes and was assumed the driver would eventually be updated. Driver is being updated, should be working in the beta driver intended for hotfix 6.

 

[ChaosWarmech]

Stan, are you saying that your Pandoras have had wifi that has been quick?

300kbps steady with my old router, jumped to 600kbps when I got a new router. At least on one of them. The other two aren't mine so I haven't had the chance to do any in depth tests, but they were acceptably quick to surf.

What router do you have, and what encryption are you using? I would love to be able to have 300kbs :/

 

[Jey123456]

unfortunatly, the chipset in the WNA1100 doesnt seem to have any open source drivers available. so there is no "easy" way to get it working on the pandora.


In theory, it should be possible with the ndiswrapper, but as far as i know, it is not available on the pandora at this present day. To my understanding, the ndiswrapper is quite heavy on the machine, its not a problem on a high end pc, but i remember that removing it from the kernel on my old pentium 3 gave me nearly 100% increase in general performance XD.

 

[ChaosWarmech]

Alright, so it does seem to be a router issue. At school I average ~2Mbps and was able to max out at almost 4.


Curiously though running "sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off" slows it down considerably. I was getting .44Mbps with it, then tried turning it back on and it was still slow. I reboot and it's back to 2Mbps... It eats battery and slows wifi! Don't use it!