Re: NeworkManager reporting incorrect signal quality (always at 100%)

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2007-07-24 at 18:57 -0600, Xavier Callejas wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The problem is that NetworkManager shows all the scanned wireless networks as 
> they would has the optimus quality signal (at 100%), nevertheless some of 
> them has poor quality signal.
> 
> 'iwlist' shows the right values.

No, it doesn't.  You'll note that the Quality reported by iwlist is
completely bogus:

Quality=30/70  Signal level=-65 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm

The first # is the difference between signal and noise, which certainly
doesn't conform to the WEXT specification.  Second, what does the
atheros driver set in the reported quality flags?  What does it call
valid?  NM uses the quality reported by the driver as valid before it
falls back to a signal/noise ratio.

In any case, there are also OpenSUSE patches that special-case madwifi
signal quality reporting in NM which could also be malfunctioning.

It could be that NM is getting the calculations wrong.  However, madwifi
has misreported quality for so long that I'm skeptical.

Dan

> This is my system:
> 
> openSUSE 10.2
> Kernel 2.6.22-45
> Atheros AR5212 802.11abg
> Madwifi:
> 	ath_hal: 0.9.30.13
> 	wlan: 0.8.4.2 (svn r2591)
> 	ath_pci: 0.9.4.5 (svn r2591)
> 	ath_rate_sample: 1.2 (svn r2591)
> wireless-tools-29pre10-22
> 
> Please look at these files to see how the problem looks like:
> 
> ftp://central.ibcinc.com.sv/xavier/NM/screenshot.png
> ftp://central.ibcinc.com.sv/xavier/NM/nm-tool.txt
> ftp://central.ibcinc.com.sv/xavier/NM/iwlist.txt
> 
> Thank you in advance.
>