ath5k droping packets

[Rioting_Pacifist]

ath5k on 2.6.29 seams to be dropping a lot of pings to my route, yet showing no errors!

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juan@Juan-debian:~$ ping 192.168.1.1 -c 10 -A
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=4.07 ms

--- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 1 received, 90% packet loss, time 9010ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 4.071/4.071/4.071/0.000 ms, ipg/ewma 1001.185/4.071 ms
juan@Juan-debian:~$ su
Juan-debian:/home/juan# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"XXX"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
          Bit Rate=1 Mb/s   Tx-Power=27 dBm
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B
          Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX [2]   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=54/100  Signal level:-59 dBm  Noise level=-78 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

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dmesg
[  199.550159] wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
[  199.552040] wlan0: authenticated
[  199.552046] wlan0: associate with AP 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
[  199.555745] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX (capab=0x411 status=0 aid=2)
[  199.555752] wlan0: associated
[ 3143.250287] ath5k phy0: unsupported jumbo #gets repeated ocationally 
[ 4169.012139] ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration timeout (2462MHz) #repeated many times

What bugs me is I have no idea whats wrong .'. no idea what to try and fix/replace!
The router (doesn't seam to have problems from windows laptops)?
switch to ndiswrapper drivers (seams like a really lame 'fix')?
switch to madwifi stack (how do I do this I did a manual install of 2.6.29 on lenny)?
Where I am(I've moved around the house and i consistantly get the same problem)?

so how can i get more detailed information on the problem to try and fix it?

[Sephiroth]

This is a bug in the ath5k module. It is pure junk. You can use aptitude or apt-get or whatever you use to grab the "madwifi-source" package and the "module-assistant" package. Then you simply need to do "m-a a-i madwifi-source" as root and you'll get the very stable, very fast MADWiFi module for your Atheros card. I have an Atheros in my laptop and ath5k killed me. Now that I have MADWiFi back, it's heaven again.

[Rioting_Pacifist]

that's a shame, i quite liked the ath5k driver as it made using airodump easier and worked better when i turned wireless on/off.

I will have to test this further as it may just be that im further away/closer but i switched to the default lenny kernel and installed madwifi, i didn't notice much of an improvement though. Also because i couldn't figure out how to install 2.6.29 the debian way m-a doesn't work, how would i fix that?

Iis there a way to analytically show this is a bug wiith ath5k (ideally with enough info for a bug report)? I mean I'm sure your right, but in future I'd quite like to figure out what the problem is myself?

[gnudude]

You could install a newer kernel that has a newer ath5k module.

I prefer to be running the free ath5k module myself!

[Sephiroth]

I am running 2.6.26-1-amd64 and have not upgraded the kernel, so I cannot help you with module-assistant. All I can say for sure is that using ath5k would allow my wireless speed to drop to around 1M/sec, which is fine if it is doing so to save power, but after doing so it would never rise above 2M/sec again. I also had a ton of lost packets, and I kept getting that "noise-floor-calibration error" message. Oh and sometimes when I would boot the laptop, it would just not see the card at all, or it wouldn't let me connect to any network, or it would connect and then fail to resolve hostnames. Installing MADWiFi fixed that, but I used module-assistant. I also noted that the MADWiFi sources on the MADWiFi site will have problems compiling on Lenny, so unless you're a programmer, using the one in the repo is advised.