LevelOne WPC-0101 connecting to hostap, was: Latency problems related to hostap?

[Sven Packebusch]

Dear List,

as you can easily see on the dates of the original attached mails this is an update to my two month old question about this horrible hickups between LevelOne WPC-0101 (WinXP) and HostAP (Brilliant Software, Jouni: I wan't a baby from you!!! *bg*)...

Finally I found the solution:
(After trying and compiling almost every version of hostap, after trying almost every firmware version for my hostap NIC ...poor little device actually after all this unneeded experiments...)
First of all: This NIC (WPC-0101) is crab... But what can you do if you have this bought before considering anything with linux and hostap and whatsoever? You try to make it work...
(Please note: I am not talking about running hostap on a WPC-0101 -> this will never be possible...)
Running it on Linux at all (as client only) is almost impossible if you are not using Kernel-2.4.18 or Kernel-2.4.20... For those versions there is a compilable version at the driver site mentioned below...

This card includes the RTL8180 chipset and is a clone for the NIC 1 and NIC 2 of the same name as the chipset from Realtek... The newest version of the Realtek Driver for these Realtek NICs (1.68) does the job with the LevelOne WPC-0101 like a charm without disruption at all, it even decreases overall latency (faster reaction times on all network traffic) and it even includes WPA and WPA-PSK support in conjunction with WinXP-SP1...

Just download the RTL8180 driver for WinXP (or your favorite other Win Version), go to control panel -> system -> Tab "hardware" -> Device Manager -> choose your PCM1000 NIC and click right -> "update driver" -> take the advanced option below and point it directly to the folder where you unpacked the driver to... The NIC will show up as RTL8180 after this procedure, wireless lan will be restarted automatically and you are ready to go...

Driverlink:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloads1-3.aspx?keyword=8180

LevelOne asked by mail after this result of my testing answered: This support will not be added at any time to their own driver, also they don't know anything about the compatibility of the driver with their NIC and I will loose any support from them, when I use it... Which support? Oh come on... What a thread...


So: This is off-topic this board or at least close to. I just wanted to document this issue for others looking (googling) for a solution to these issues... And also because I asked the original question here...

Definitivly no problem of hostap, how could I even think about this, no problem of bridging, all each 60 seconds breaks gone...


Jouni, thank you for your great work and go on like you did already!


Sven 


"Sachin Goyal" <sgoyal at cs.utah.edu> schrieb am 25.02.04 07:01:14:
> 
> 
> This may be a problem with power saving mode (PSM) of your wireless card.
> 
> PSM is not enabled in hostap by default (I guess it don't even work..), so
> no need to worry about that.. but do check the settings on ur windows xp box
> if PSM (or so called sleep mode) is enabled and if yes, disable it  -- This
> setting is usually in the card manufacturer utility to configure ur card.
> 
> hope it helps.
> 
> sachin
> 
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: hostap-bounces+sgoyal=cs.utah.edu at shmoo.com
> > [mailto:hostap-bounces+sgoyal=cs.utah.edu at shmoo.com]On Behalf Of Sven
> > Packebusch
> > Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 6:44 AM
> > To: hostap at shmoo.com
> > Subject: Latency problems related to hostap?
> >
> >
> > Dear list,
> >
> > I'm not even sure if I really have a problem and whether it is
> > hostap related at all. Oh... What an entrance, but please go on
> > reading... (-;
> >
> >
> > Impact:
> >
> > If I run a vi-Session from an associated station to my hostap-box
> > (WindowsXP - Debian Linux) I get kind of "hiccups" after a random
> > period of time.
> > Running a sequence of pings verifies this behaviour. After a
> > random number of pings (between 20 and 50) having latency times
> > of 2ms I get 3 to 4 missing answers and a response time of 2400ms
> > for the next working ping.
> >
> >
> > Setup:
> >
> > Hostap box:
> > Debian Linux testing/unstable, kernel-image 2.4.23 with the
> > prebuild package of the hostap modules being available (HostAP
> > vers. 0.1.2) for this kernel image.
> > 233Mhz Pentium II MMX, 128MB RAM, running several services
> > including a pppoe-Link, samba, mysql, apache... When using the
> > WLAN connecting at maximum connection speed (large file
> > transfer), the CPU utilization is at about 30% (SAMBA and kernel).
> > 3Com 3CRDW696 PCI, Prism 2.5 chipset, upgraded to Firmware
> > Versions 1.1.0 and 1.7.4.
> > Settings for the AP: channel 3, WEP 104bit key in place
> > (restricted mode), Master mode, essid set explicitly, everything
> > else left to standard values.
> > wlan0 and eth0 are brought up in bridging mode via the bridging
> > tool brctl using the standard bridging modules delivered with the
> > standard kernel mentioned above.
> >
> > WindoofXP box:
> > AMD Athlon XP 1600+, Windows patched with current patch releases,
> > LevelOne WPC-0101 running on an Realtek Chipset with the most
> > current driver, running in infrastructure mode, settings left to
> > Windows via automatic mode (doing this by hand doesn't change the
> > situation at all). Association etc. works like a charm, no
> > problems at all, adress is given via DHCP to the interface. The
> > interface is working in CAM (continuous access mode), all power
> > saving settings are disabled.
> >
> >
> > Additional information:
> >
> > The "hiccups" can be monitored in the Windows Driver Tool
> > delivered with the card. There you have a status information
> > field which is showing "associated" during normal operation. On
> > occurance of the problem it is switching to "checking status" for
> > the durance of the hiccup, afterwards it is showing the link
> > qualitiy and the signal state as "very good" again.
> > In the kernel logs I don't find any associated entries like
> > disassociation or changing of the transfer rates. You just don't
> > find anything on the linux side except the hanging ping.
> >
> >
> > As I'm quite familiar to Linux (especially the Debian
> > distribution), networking under Windows and Linux I am quite
> > sure, that there's no misconfiguration in the "normal" settings there.
> > What is definitly totally new to me is everything "wireless"
> > related. (I've been working with several internet sources to
> > bring my setup up without having any serious trouble.) I don't
> > know if this behaviour is kind of normal on a wireless media or
> > if this could be caused by the client adapter. I even don't know
> > which other log-possibilities I have to track this down.
> >
> >
> > So, questions to this list (if somebody would like to help me in any way):
> >
> > What additional information could I get from which logging
> > facility in order to track this down? How to configure these
> > logging possibilities?
> > Which additional information could I give to you?
> > Does anyone know this problem or is it just normal behaviour on a
> > wireless media? How to fix the problem if it is not "normal".
> > Might it be a problem with the settings of the hostap-modules?
> >
> >
> > I haven't found any related information whether in this lists
> > archive nor on the internet in general of the manuals shipped
> > with the driver. If there is something, please point me to it!
> > It is getting on my nervs having those hiccups during using a vi
> > on a ssh session or during gaming.
> >
> >
> > Thank you for reading this huge amoung of text and excuse if I am
> > completely wrong here...
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Sven
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