I have an Asus Eee 1005 HA with ZW 6.2 installed along with Windows XP. The wireless connection with XP is great but the ZW connection leaves quite a bit to be desired. It usually connects nicely for a minute or two then drops and I can no longer surf without closing the window and starting over, loggin out and loggin back in, or closing network connection and connecting again or a combination of some or all of these before it comes back to life. I have a Belkin N router if that is any help. My connection is better if I sit next to the router when I am working, but that kind of defeats the whole purpose of being wireless. I read that some others had the same problem and fixed it by changing the display to show dBm's instead of % but that didn't work for me.

Since the Windows drivers work well, would I be better off using NDISWRAPPER and running those or can I tweak something in WICD? Thanks in advance for your help.

I don't think that ndiswrapper will be any help. I am experiencing the same problems, especially during downloads. I have tried usb dongles with both a zydas chip (with the kernel's zw1211rw driver) and an atheros chip with ndiswrapper and the problem affects both. This was also a problem with 6.0 on occaision, but at the time I used eth0 almost exclusively and didn't worry about it.

The signal is very weak with the zydas dongle, which is why I tried the other, but even though signal quality is much better the problem persists. Don't know enough about networking to pursue further, will try the dBm setting to see if it helps.

govejp- it may be a little early to tell for sure, but for right now I believe that setting the signal strength to read in dBm did fix or at least help with the problem for me. Have been online for 20 mins and so far haven't lost the connection. Download is running around 220 - 400 KB/s (Linksys G router) and is stable so far. I am using the atheros chip dongle with ndiswrapper. I have had to restart the download twice (using DTA download manager extension in Iceweasel) but not sure that's part of the same issue.

Try yours with ndiswrapper and the dBm setting and see if it works (remember to unload the current driver.) Hope you get straightened out with it, but this is about the limit of my wireless networking expertise.

By the way, I also have a laptop running Debian Lenny, and put wicd on it to handle connections since I am so used to it in ZW. I don't have this problem on it, using the same adapters, so I'm not sure if it is a kernel issue, a version number issue (Debian is famously slow to upgrade apps) or something unique to ZW's implementation.

My local LUG (linux users group) guru suggested installing Opera (instead of Iceweasel). I left Iceweasel on but installed Opera (from the repository) and I have to say, my connections and staying power are much better. I still need Iceweasel to get onto some sites, but most of the time, Opera is fine and response time for loading (webpages) is much better. I've stayed connected for over an hour or so and only disconnected on my own terms the first time I tried it. At the same time, I did experience a connection issue once the next day. However, I logged out and back on and it worked. Also, refreshing the network list from WICD sometimes restores a broken connection. While slightly annoying, it's no longer a dealbreaker with ZW as a viable OS for this computer. In fact, I think ZW is a really good choice for these netbooks. People are impressed when I show them what it can do. Anyway, I'm can't say yet that the problem is completely solved, but I will say that if you are having similar problems, try this and see if it makes things bearable for you. For anyone who happens to be a hardware/software interaction expert, perhaps this will help to indicate the true nature of this now "petite" problem, on the other hand, maybe not.

I can confirm your observations about increased stability with Opera. And I think I've narrowed the problem further- if I am working in a general browsing mode - reading e-mails, checking news feeds, etc. I don't seem to have the problem with dropped connections even in long sessions. But if I am downloading, especially a large file such as a new distro .iso, the connection fails. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but it fails. When I try to restart it, it usually stalls at the validation stage ( I use wpa2 ) using wicd to connect, or if I try to connect from the cli it fails to get a dhcp handshake. The longer my session lasts, the shorter the span between failures.

I have no idea why changing the wicd-client preferences to display signal strength in dBms instead of percentage improves connection stability. It doesn't seem that this would be anything other than a cosmetic thing. But it has helped - I was on for a couple of hours yesterday, using Iceweasel, watching video clips, downloading a clean disc for 6.2 as backup ( I had to use an existing beta disc to install in this machine ) and hanging out on a couple of forums without ever experiencing a drop. Go figure.

Well one thing for sure, the closer I am to the router, the more stable the connection. I try to stray far to work and sometimes it's ok. Other times, I have to move closer to the (Belkin) box.

Did anyone find a solution to this? I have this problem with my IBM T42 laptop. I can see the diode for wireless blinking and the icon at the bottom toolbar going between 0%, 87% ... and completely turned off. It seems to me the wireless driver is not getting proper attention in Zenwalk and/or a second network driver is also requesting access. This is highly irritating and definitely reducing the bandwidth.

I wasn't been able to solve this completely. I did improve connectivity by setting wicd to display signal in dBms, but Iceweasel downloads can kill the connection almost immediately. Opera is less likely to drop the connection, but it still happens occaisionally, disrupting long downloads.

This behavior is not new to 6.2, it began in 6.0, and was not confined to only one system but affected my laptop as well using the same USB adapters/drivers (Netgear WG111T with ndiswrapper.) I believe it may be that the windows XP driver in use with ndiswrapper doesn't mesh well with the newer kernels, as it runs happily on Debian Lenny with a 2.6.26.2 kernel. The kernel drivers aren't an issue, the dongle isn't even detected at boot. I did try adding them manually, but without luck, the system still could not find any networks.

As this is a test machine only, I have moved on to other distros on it now. I will test the same setup on similar (Salix and Vector) installs later this week to see if it is a ZW issue or not- I suspect it isn't.

Hi Madmarv.

Thank you for your reply. I'd really appreciate a small report when you have some conclusions. It can be most helpful.

In the meantime I'll just use my laptop with a 20 m Ethernet cable ... but it kinda defeats the purpose of a laptop <smile> ...

OK, not sure if this will help anyone, but it seems the Salix install has more stable wireless with both dongles. I was actually able to get a better connection with the Zydas chipped dongle, at around 88% and using the kernel drivers. Download speeds run at 450+ KB/s, highest I saw was almost 700. (I am on a cable connection, speeds often vary.) I was able to crash the connection once, with 4 concurrent downloads and browsing a photo gallery at the same time, but it restored easily. The only differences I see here are that Salix uses the 2.6.29.6 kernel, and Firefox 3.5.3 instead of Iceweasel.

I am now using the Netgear dongle, with ndiswrapper. Signal is considerably weaker, only about 30%. Download speeds are slower as well, running around 300 - 500 KB/s. It has dropped the connection once while only one download was running and I was browsing forums. I was able to recover the session (but not the download) within 90 seconds. In short, even with ndiswrapper, my connection is more stable than on ZW6.2. I'll be keeping this on my system for one week, to continue testing, if anyone has questions I will be checking in with the forums every evening.

After that I'll try Vector, and let you know how it handles my setup.

Hi Madmarv.

Thanks for the report! I look forward to hearing how Vector is doing, what kernel is used, etc.

BR,
Claus

I found a bug thread here (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wicd/+bug/334445) that may be related. Basically the same thing I have been suspecting, a problem with older drivers- not having the signal output interpreted correctly by wicd leads wicd to believe the connection is bad when it actually isn't, and causes it to try to reconnect. This wouldn't be so bad if it DID actually reconnect, so there must be something else going on. I suspect encryption.

My home is on a wpa2 secured network. As I mentioned earlier, this problem actually began with 6.0. Failures were not as common as on 6.2, but would occur especially during long sessions. Still, while this was going on I used the zydas dongle on a ZW6.0 machine at work and rarely had a problem. When there was a failure, it would always reconnect. The university uses MAC registration only, no encryption, which was the only difference between the setups. For a long time I thought the adapter I used at home was failing, and bought another, but had the same results.

I think tonight I'll put 6.2 back on the test box. I'll first try with the encryption off, then I'll remove wicd and try that. May take me a couple of days. I'll let you know what happens.

Hi madmarv.

Great to hear - and thanks for letting me in on your results. I think you could be very right that WICD is the culprit of problems. I noticed to begin with, that if I started WICD, I would loose my connection. This is my first Zenwalk machine on a wireless connection - so I was previously not using WICD (and had no problems) ... I am wondering if installing MadWifi could change things to the better on my IBM T42.

P.S. I can make the pages load, if I push the RELOAD button a number of times (10 - 20 times, with a 1 - 2 second pause in between each push). It is utterly unstable.

Best regards,
Claus

I'm really sorry, but none of the fixes make sense to me. What I did was install Ubuntu Jaunty Netbook Remix and follow the instructions here:
http://www.jfwhome.com/2009/08/06/perfe ... nt-page-1/

For some reason, this version of Ubuntu works as well as my Windows connection. It also solved my problem of getting the ethernet to work which hadn't previously.

I will wait for the next release of Zen and try again, but I'm going to pass on 6.2.

Thanks for the help though.

Salix has problems establishing the connection, but once I get it up it works. I'm using the zydas chip with the kernel driver. The signal strength jumps around from 5% to 100%, but it runs. This makes me think the ubuntu bug report is right, and it is a wicd problem and relates to the newer (2.6.28.x and later) kernels.

govejp, keep checking in. If we get enough info someone will be able to get the problem isolated and fixed. Good luck-