Re: permanently blacklisting an AP; rate setting on bcm43xx

[Larry Finger <larry finger lwfinger net>]

John Steele Scott wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is it possible to permanently blacklist an access point by its MAC
> address? I've tried removing the address in gconf-editor, but this didn't
> do what I wanted.
>
> The situation is that I have two APs in a WDS setup. One of the APs (a
> Billion 7402VGP) does not work properly with the bcm43xx in my iBook. The
> other AP (a Belkin) works fine. So I want NetworkManager to only associate
> with the Belkin, and never with the Billion.
>
> Another question. On the same iBook, when NetworkManager associates with
> an AP, the bit rate is 11Mbits. If I want it faster (e.g. 54Mbits), I have
> to set it manually with iwconfig. Is this a known
> bug? Is there a simple way to specific a command to run every time NM
> associates, so I could have this happen automatically?
>
> I am using NM 0.6.4 from Ubuntu Feisty.

It is a feature, not a bug. Until very recently, none of the bcm43xx drivers could go very fast and 
11 Mbs was set to enable the driver to authenticate with some reliability.

What kernel version is in Feisty? Incidentally, it is rare for a bcm43xx driver to work reliably at 
54 Mbs. As the bcm43xx-softmac maintainer, I have access to the latest modifications. My BCM4311 
works best at 36 Mbs, but the throughput falls off a lot at 48 Mbs, and it fails at 54 Mbs. I have 
heard rumors of cards working at 54 Mbs, but no concrete data. If you can run an Iperf test with a 
local server, I would be interested in the numbers.

With 2.6.22-rc3, the default is set to 24 Mbs, which has the best throughput for most versions of 
the bcm43xx. The bcm43xx-softmac driver does not do any rate manipulation, and it stays where you 
set it.

Larry