Post Your Speed Over Wifi

[mali]

^ The phrase sounds worn out, but you have to give it more time. Too few Pandoras in devs' hands, thus far.

 

[gibberish]

this is something that should have been sorted before the pandoras were even shipped, or they should have gone with their plan of sending out wifi adaptors with the machines. the internet is unusable, and it is one of the main reasons i grabbed a pandora to begin with. it's frustrating because it doesn't look like it's even being prioritised at all, when it really should be.

 

[EvilDragon]

this is something that should have been sorted before the pandoras were even shipped, or they should have gone with their plan of sending out wifi adaptors with the machines. the internet is unusable, and it is one of the main reasons i grabbed a pandora to begin with. it's frustrating because it doesn't look like it's even being prioritised at all, when it really should be.

So, we either should have delayed shipping for a few months even if WiFi is working (though with some bugs), and for some with normal speed?
Or add another xx.xxx EUR to our costs, because you couldn't wait?

I use the internet daily with my Pandora, as do other guys. It's not unusable, it's just slow for some guys (and we don't know why yet).

If you can't wait, why not hire a programmer who can fix it?
After all, we always said the software will be in alpha state and needs some time to evolve... so give it the time to evolve.

 

[gibberish]

i don't mind waiting and of course i understand that software is alpha, but is anyone actually actively working on it? i don't really see any updates about it.
i guess "usable" depends on your definition. i can physically connect to the internet, but half of the time my pages won't finish loading and refreshing the page won't fix it. i also cannot download any files because they end up corrupted. to me that is unusable. i've tried fennec, midori and arora, admittedly i haven't tested chrome yet so perhaps i'll give it a go.

 

[chris_c]

I've had similar issues sometimes with a supposedly "finished" product like an eeePC, its often the case that changing settings on your router can have a BIG impact, sometimes heavy traffic on one particular channel can cause all sorts of odd problems for example. Its well worth your time experimenting with different router setting or even borrow a different brand of router. A lot of "N" routers were built before the "N" standard was even complete, also check there isn't an update for your router.

Yes in an ideal world your pandora should play perfect with every single router in existence but even for some laptops this can be a problem depending on the environment and other wifi traffic etc. etc.

Theres no doubt improvements could be possible but in the meantime...

 

[gibberish]

i have a netbook for wifi at home, i use pandora while out and about where obviously i have no access to the router settings.

 

[mhadf]

Has anyone tried with different routers and the same Pandora? Just that different ones have different quirks

Belkin seem to be very picky about what they will and won't do.
Netgear seem to let anything go through.
Dlink are good for a few months but rapidly stop working properly.

 

[tsh]

i can physically connect to the internet, but half of the time my pages won't finish loading and refreshing the page won't fix it. i also cannot download any files because they end up corrupted. to me that is unusable. i've tried fennec, midori and arora, admittedly i haven't tested chrome yet so perhaps i'll give it a go.

I had this sort of behaviour yesterday, it seemed to be that the connection just kept getting dropped (although my pings were 100%, unlike earlier when I was seeing 10% loss). Deleting the connection details in network manager and re-booting seems to have fixed it - straw clutching maybe, but worth a try. I think if you are unable to load web pages, there is definitely a problem. Not being able to stream video is a different question, seems we need to wait a while for that.

 

[EvilDragon]

i don't mind waiting and of course i understand that software is alpha, but is anyone actually actively working on it? i don't really see any updates about it.
i guess "usable" depends on your definition. i can physically connect to the internet, but half of the time my pages won't finish loading and refreshing the page won't fix it. i also cannot download any files because they end up corrupted. to me that is unusable. i've tried fennec, midori and arora, admittedly i haven't tested chrome yet so perhaps i'll give it a go.

Well, tried changing the channel on your router? Might be a lot of traffic on the same channel.
Higher channels seem to work better with the Pandora.

As said, at the moment, nobody is really working on it AFAIK.
The devs are taking a well-deserved break, so unless someone else grabs the current driver source at the moment and tries to fix it, no one is working on it.

 

[milkshake]

when will the devs be back working on the drivers? just out of curiosity.

 

[EvilDragon]

when will the devs be back working on the drivers? just out of curiosity.

When they feel like it
They want to code some fun things right now.

 

[milkshake]

I don't mean to sound moany cos I'm happy with my Pandora, but it was an investment and as such I would obviously be much happier knowing that everything works correctly.
At the moment the WiFi isn't 100% and it makes me sad I hope they want to help fix some driver bugs soon

 

[fusion_power]

The devs are taking a well-deserved break, so unless someone else grabs the current driver source at the moment and tries to fix it, no one is working on it.

Over 600 People already have their Pandoras and none of them can improve some little WiFi Drivers/Network Managers/whatever? Where are all the bored, employless Programmers out there that just wait to put their hands on something like that?
Come out of your holes, spend a weekend and I guess the WiFi problems are History.

 

[jonlad1]

I've no real need for wifi at the moment.

My HTC Desire's browser is just about as fast as my laptop so I just use that for mobile browsing.

Along with everything else, I'm sure wifi will be honed to perfect at some point down the line.

 

[ivanovic]

i don't mind waiting and of course i understand that software is alpha, but is anyone actually actively working on it? i don't really see any updates about it.
i guess "usable" depends on your definition. i can physically connect to the internet, but half of the time my pages won't finish loading and refreshing the page won't fix it. i also cannot download any files because they end up corrupted. to me that is unusable. i've tried fennec, midori and arora, admittedly i haven't tested chrome yet so perhaps i'll give it a go.

Well, tried changing the channel on your router? Might be a lot of traffic on the same channel.
Higher channels seem to work better with the Pandora.

As said, at the moment, nobody is really working on it AFAIK.
The devs are taking a well-deserved break, so unless someone else grabs the current driver source at the moment and tries to fix it, no one is working on it.

Changing the channel used is not the solution that does fit all. I don't have any disturbing networks close and changing chans does not make any huge difference over here. It clearly does depend on the access points used. In fact there is even a bug report where at least I left all the information that I got: http://bugs.openpandora.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=140&project=1&order=id&sort=desc
Yes, more data regarding accesspoints used and speed accomplished makes sense. In fact it seems that (or maybe better "feels like") the pandora does only communicate via 802.11b instead of 802.11g, even though iwconfig does show that the connection has some 36MBit when the enormous amount of 100KB/s is currently transmitted using wget to load a file to /dev/null.

 

[Loon]

As said, at the moment, nobody is really working on it AFAIK.

I'd certainly look at getting this sorted, or at least significantly improved, before units are sent out for media review.

With that in mind has there been any guidance as to how the userbase can help with diagnosis? Such as using the same speed test, listing your router make & model, listing which WIFI channel you are using, how far away from the router you are when you perform the test etc.

 

[peca]

As I'm not a Linux expert, I just recognize, that I haven't clue, how to test speed properly. Testing in browser isn't good, as there is major impact of browser performance. In Chromium I gets about 2 Mbps (mega bits) on 30 Mbps line through b/g wifi.
I'll try to find some time, connect laptop by UTP and share some folder (Windows 7), then transfer some files. But here I guess is another bottleneck - SD card speed, or USB throughput, and overall protocol (FTP - I have simple FTP server installed) overhead.
EDIT: Forgot say: For browsing is Pandora's wifi suitable enough, even if it have weird states sometimes.

 

[tsh]

Over 600 People already have their Pandoras and none of them can improve some little WiFi Drivers/Network Managers/whatever?

Well, I guess the WiFi problem is quite involved, and things might change (+/-?) with the kernel upgrade which is in the works. For me, I'm currently more interested in the power management, since having my unit take better care of it's battery life is something useful for me. (not that I claim to be a kernel dev, but I can spot problems and tweak what already exists)

With that in mind has there been any guidance as to how the userbase can help with diagnosis? Such as using the same speed test, listing your router make & model, listing which WIFI channel you are using, how far away from the router you are when you perform the test etc.

I don't think any more user testing will help much, since there are so many variables (and if it is a software bug, it may be state dependant too). What is useful if if a single user can replicate both good and bad behaviour in a way which a 2nd user can also replicate. Most useful is probably to look at the bug tracker for Network Manager and trawl their source code for bugs by inspection.

 

[porg]

WiFi mysteries resolved once and for all — Power saving is clearly the culprit!