Atheros AR5008 802.11n wireless - why so slow?

**Aaron44126** · November 14th, 2008

I have a laptop with a wireless card with the Atheros AR5008 802.11n chipset.

When I'm connected to an 802.11b or g network, the speed seems reasonable. However, when I am connected to an 802.11n network, the speed seems unreasonably slow. I checked iwconfig and got this info:

Code:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11abgn  ESSID:"Vanguard Airport Network"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:1B:63:2C:C5:54   
          Bit Rate=1 Mb/s   Tx-Power=23 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B   
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=73/100  Signal level:-48 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

...Huh? 1 Mb/s? Under Windows, I connect to this access point at 130 Mb/s.

If it matters, the access point is one of those Apple Airport Extreme base stations. We have a few of them set up as access points only. This is the only 802.11n hardware I have to test with.

Anyone seen something like this before, or have any ideas of how to kick my wireless card into gear?

Thanks.

**Gizmonty** · November 16th, 2008

I also have this issue with an Atheros AR5008 PCIe card (D-Link DWA-556). My iwconfig is essentially identical. There doesn't seem to be a solution posted anywhere. Can anyone shed some light?

**Aaron44126** · November 16th, 2008

I messed with this some yesterday and figured out how to load the latest version of the wireless drivers from here: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download

I haven't had a chance to test it yet to see if there is any difference. I'm going to be trying it out tomorrow.

If it works better, I will post directions here on getting those drivers compiled and loaded. If it doesn't work, I'll file a bug report against ath9k at wireless.kernel.org, where the development seems to be going on.

**Aaron44126** · November 17th, 2008

Sorry for double posting but I wanted to report my results.

The ath9k driver dated November 10, 2008 performs much better. But I got a kernel panic after a short while of using it so I went back to the original, slow driver.

Some numbers:

Transferring from an FTP server on my LAN.
With the stock Ubuntu driver I get about 220 KB/sec.
With the newer driver I get a little over 3 MB/sec.

Hopefully they'll fix it up and it'll make its way into the kernel eventually.

I've noted all of this in my Ubuntu bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/298192