ASUS N13 w/Slow Connect Speeds?

[praseodym]

You can also try the mainline kernel 3.9

[Akacheebe]

I've been having problems, using a USB-N13 as well. As far as I can tell, there is a kernel bug in kernel 3.8. The only way I can get the damned thing to work at all is to downgrade to an old kernel - works fine in kernel 3.5.

Is there any news on a fix to this bug yet? There are several threads lurking about complaining about this specific brand of wifi adaptor. The problem is that the kernel driver is broken. How long before an Ubuntu or Linux kernel developer pushes a fix to the repos?

Well, I'm using kernel v3.5.0-28 now and it does work, just at half the speed of what Windows does on the exact same hardware? This was a clean install done about two weeks ago from the v12.04.2 install DVD and one kernel update was done since then to bring it up to -28.

You can also try the mainline kernel 3.9

That's probably not going to happen unless it comes with a regular update! Reason: THAT is the reason I had to do the clean install a couple of weeks ago, ie, tried to upgrade from kernel 3.2 to 3.5 and wound up trashing it and had to do a clean install. Since I'm on metered internet service, (bytes are not unlimited to some of us) there won't be any more clean installs with 500MB of updates/upgrades to download until next month!

And on a positive note, when my wired PCI network card got fried a few days ago I plugged this N13 card in and it worked right away. It's just slow as a snail is all. If I can get the speed up to what Windows XP x64 runs it at then I'd be a happy camper!

[Akacheebe]

Ok so are we done here? Nothing that can be done to fix this problem??

[praseodym]

Why not trying 3.9? It runs here without problems on 12.04

[Akacheebe]

Why not trying 3.9? It runs here without problems on 12.04

So is that the only answer?Meldroc up the page stated he had used his N13 with v3.5 with no problems although I don't know if he actually checked the file transfer speeds to see how they compared to Windows. If my system wasn't dual boot then I'd likely not know the difference either. Mine works and is OK for just surfing the web but file transfers are really slow.

As I mentioned above, I tried to update the kernel from 3.2 to 3.5 on this old hardware and wound up with no video and I couldn't figure out how to get it back. That was the reason I had to do that recent clean install using v12.04.2.

I'm also on metered service, ie, USB mobile broadband card that runs off of the local cell tower. If I run out of bandwidth then it's going to cost me another $40 to make it through the month. The Wife and I use that same service through a draft N mobile broadband router so it's stretched to the limit most of the time anyway. If I wind up having to do another clean install because of a failed kernel update then I know those Ubuntu updates will run me out of bandwidth. FYI, the only other service that's available to me is dialup and I sure don't want to go there again!

So if the kernel update is all that's left to try then I'm done and I'll just have to live with the slow speed.

Thanks

[varunendra]

So if the kernel update is all that's left to try then I'm done and I'll just have to live with the slow speed.

Can't guarantee if it'll improve the speed or not, but you can try installing the proprietary driver from Ralink if you wish. It's only about 700KB download.

1. Dowonload the driver from here : http://www.mediatek.com/_en/07_downl...il.php?sn=5016 (use any random name/email to access the download if you don't like to share that info)
2. Copy it to your desktop and rename it to add ".tar" before ".bz2" in the last. (2011_0719_RT3070_RT3370_RT5370_RT5372_Linux_STA_V 2.5.0.3_DPO.tar.bz2).
3. Right-click > "Extract here". This will extract the driver source files to a folder named "2011_0719_RT3070_RT3370_RT5370_RT5372_Linux_STA_V 2.5.0.3_DPO"
4. Go to os/linux folder within the extracted directory and open "config.mk" file.
5. Edit lines numbers 56 and 60 ("HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=n" and "HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=n") and change their value from "n" to "y" ("HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=y" and "HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=y"). Proofread, save and close the file.
6. Open a terminal and do the following :

(hint : just type a few initial characters then press 'Tab' key to auto-complete the rest of the names)

cd ~/Desktop/2011_0719_RT3070_RT3370_RT5370_RT5372_Linux_STA_V2.5.0.3_DPO
sudo su
modprobe -rfv rt2800usb
cd ~/Desktop/2011_0719_RT3070_RT3370_RT5370_RT5372_Linux_STA_V2.5.0.3_DPO # Sorry! Wrong place for the command, thanks to Expe for heads up!
make
make install
echo "blacklist rt2800usb" | tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
exit

Reboot if required.

Notes:
The second command (modprobe -rfv...) will disable your usb wireless, don't worry about that.
The second last command will 'blacklist' the current native driver to make sure it does not get loaded again and there is no conflict. On next reboot, the sta driver should be automatically loaded.

Watch out for errors while this is being done. Exactly 'one' error during 'make' (regarding tftpboot) is normal and can be safely ignored. Post back if there are more.

[Akacheebe]

varunendra thanks for your reply as I was thinking that I was done. Real life will have me busy these next couple of days but I will try this over the weekend.

Thanks again!!

[Akacheebe]

Finally got around to installing this driver and it seems to be much faster now than before. I did have a system lockup though so the jury is out as to whether this new driver cause it or not. Will monitor it over the next few days to see if it keeps happening.

Oh, and one line of your code was wrong. Took me about 30 minutes to figure that out but I did get it done in the end. That error is in line 3 where you show a cd then have `/ in there and it turns out they aren't needed. I dropped those two characters then it did cd fine. Yeah I know, I'm slow as I'm not a command line person at all!! You have to understand that I was brought up on Windows and their GUI.

Ennywho, thanks for your help and I'll go ahead and mark this solved. If I have problems with more system lockups then I may revisit it again to maybe go back to the old driver.

[varunendra]

I'm very pleased you made it, and that it is delivering better speeds. I don't think it might cause any trouble about system freezes, but things that I didn't know or experienced keep coming everyday .

And..

Oh, and one line of your code was wrong. Took me about 30 minutes to figure that out but I did get it done in the end. That error is in line 3 where you show a cd then have `/ in there and it turns out they aren't needed. I dropped those two characters then it did cd fine.

No, it wasn't a mistake. I intentionally put it there. It makes 'Extra sure' that the user gets 'Into' the Desktop before executing the rest of the commands. The "~/" part, while executing, gets replaced by the user's 'Home' path.

In case your current working directory in terminal is not your 'Home' directory (say, for example, you accidentally or while doing something else switched to a different one) you will get an error if directly starting the path with "Desktop/....". But if there is a "~/" in the beginning, it is treated as a full path (/home/<user>/), thus never failing

If you got an error due to that, most probably you were typing a wrong character (as apparent in your post). The "~" key is on the same key as backquote ("`", above "tab", before "1" on my US-104 type keyboard), but is typed with "Shift" key.

Anyway, if you happen to face any problems with the driver again, please let us know. It'll be a good idea to post back, along with a description of the problem, a full diagnostics report that you can generate with "Wireless Script" following its link in my signature

[Akacheebe]

Well, I copied and pasted everything from your post into terminal so it it was wrong, then it was written that way to begin with. When I tried to cd to the desktop it kept giving me a "not found" error, or something to that effect?? When I removed the ~/ it finally did go ahead and I could "make".

Anyway, this thing has locked up 4 times since I marked this problem solved so I'm going to have to go back to that other driver.

So would you please give me what I need for terminal commands so I can activate the old driver and blacklist or remove this new one?

Thanks