mcmlxxii

In both Ubuntu Jaunty and now Karmic, I have been experiencing pretty dreadful wireless performance using a combination of the Atheros AR5008 chipset and the default GNOME connection management tool Network Manager. I have read elsewhere that Network Manager scans at regular intervals for available networks in the vicinity, which appears to have the effect of disassociating the AR5008 from the current access point, and this does indeed seem to be what is happening.

In order to test the theory, I installed WICD instead, as I have in the past, and once again WICD fixed the problem. I’m not sure why the WICD team just seem to be able to get wireless to work where Network Manager boys persistently struggle, and WICD lacks the additional functionality of 3G connection management, but it just bloody works and that’s the most important feature of a connection manager.

I’ve been using WICD on and off for some time, and I’m impressed with the speed it has developed. It also looks a lot slicker than it did in the early days, something that has not gone unnoticed in the Ubuntu camp as it’s now available in the repositories. One command,

sudo apt-get install wicd

now ditches Network Manager and installs WICD. If you’re having problems with the AR5008 in Ubuntu, it’s well worth a try.

If you’ve used the Ralink RT73 chipset under Ubuntu for any length of time, you’ll know that the default drivers aren’t yet perfect (some supporting evidence). Some may have had more success, but in my experience they drop out regularly and transfer rates are pretty mediocre. The modules used are the rt2x00usb and rt73usb. These are the next generation of Ralink drivers from Serialmonkey, and to be fair they have improved a great deal over the past couple of years. However, there is a more stable driver, which, although requiring some sacrifice, rewards the user with good injection support, great transfer speeds and no drop-outs.

Step forward the rt73 legacy driver….
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