ath(4) and 802.11g speed

[Damian Gerow]

Thus spake Daniel O'Connor (doconnor at gsoft.com.au) [08/03/06 19:45]:
: In any case I imagine there is no point forcing it to use 54Mbit - it will 
: negotiate the highest speed it can manage based on signal strength and 
: hardware support (for the AP and the card) automatically.

Huh.

: I suspect forcing 54Mbit will either not work at all (because the signal isn't 
: strong enough or your hardware doesn't support it), or it will negotiate a 
: speed up to 54Mbit (which would result in no functional change).

Okay, this has me a bit curious, so I dug into it a bit more:

    SSID            BSSID              CHAN RATE  S:N   INT CAPS
    linksys         00:06:25:7b:25:3d    6   11M 35:0   100 E
    MYSSID          00:12:17:85:9a:3b   11   54M 39:0   100 E
    wahoo62         00:13:46:47:0f:0e   11   54M  4:0   100 EPS

I'd have thought that a S:N of 39:0 wouldn't be all that weak, no?  Looking
at a post by Sam this past August, he calls 30:0 "very strong", though that
was for an 802.11b link.  I'd think that the higher the number, the stronger
the signal.  Is the above too weak to handle a full 54Mbps link?