802.11b poor transfer rates

[Aidan Whyte]

Hi.

I've got 5.3-Release running with an orinoco clone 802.11b wifi card plugged into the back of the pc 
via a pci<->cardbus adapter.

I can establish both the actual wireless connection and a working tcp/ip connection over the card, 
but the wifi card seems to be 'stuck' in 1mbit transfer mode. Current SNR is 14 which should easily 
be enough for an 11mbit autonegotiation. I've tried forcing the card to go to 11mbit via a 'media 
DS/11Mbps' switch for the card in /etc/rc.conf which made no change to the actual transfer rates.

ifconfig shows the following..

wi0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        inet 10.4.1.105 netmask 0xffffffe0 broadcast 10.4.1.127
        inet6 fe80::202:2dff:fe3f:8611%wi0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
        ether 00:02:2d:3f:86:11
        media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet DS/11Mbps
        status: associated
<snipped the rest>


wicontrol shows...

IBSS channel:                           [ 10 ]
Current channel:                        [ 8 ]
Comms quality/signal/noise:             [ 14 66 52 ]
dBm Coms Quality:                       [ 32 ]
Promiscuous mode:                       [ Off ]
Process 802.11b Frame:                  [ Off ]
Intersil-Prism2 based card:             [ 0 ]
Port type (1=BSS, 3=ad-hoc):            [ 1 ]
MAC address:                            [ 00:02:2d:3f:86:11 ]
TX rate (selection):                    [ 11 ]
TX rate (actual speed):                 [ 11 ]
RTS/CTS handshake threshold:            [ 2347 ]
Create IBSS:                            [ Off ]
Access point density:                   [ 1 ]
Power Mgmt (1=on, 0=off):               [ 0 ]


Now, even with ifconfig saying that, I can't get more than 70KB/sec over the link no matter what I 
try, which is about what you'd expect for a "1mbit" 802.11b connection. Before I upgraded this box, 
it was running 4.10-stable and getting throughput of more than 350KB/sec over the same link.

Does anyone have any ideas for a fix for this?


Cheers,
Aidan.