Re: problems with intel wireless cards

[Jacob Oursland <jacob oursland mines sdsmt edu>]

On Mon, 2008-11-10 at 15:55 +0100, Bjorge Solli wrote:

> I run the iwl4965,iwlcore,mac80211,cfg80211 kernel modules.
> 
> Thanks for the update.
> Bjørge

I, too, run that Intel Wireless adapter on my Lenovo T61p and I, too,
have terrible problems with the device.  From failures in wireless
connections all the way up to ACPI failures can be traced to this
driver.  (Hint: Macbook Pro and Lenovo T61p on a 802.11n network is a
surefire way to kill the machine.)

I've no solution that works every time.  Sometimes disabling the
wireless and reenabling it through nm-applet fixes it, other times
restarting NetworkManager or reloading the modules are required and yet
other times it seems only to respond to a full reboot.

The problems occur on every type of connection and on every type of AP.
In particular, my university's 802.1x Dynamic WEP with a bazillion APs
with the same ssid is very challenging for NM to connect to.  Some of
this is related to nm-applet and some of it the driver.

I've modified my nm-applet to connect to the highest signal strength AP
with the same ssid.  In nm-applet's applet-device-wifi.c a modification
is required in add_one_ap_menu_item() to not only update the signal
strength of the menu list, but also the AP that the higher strength was
detected on.  Otherwise it'll connect to the first AP its detected with
the given ssid instead of the AP with the greatest strength.

-Jake