[LUGSB] How to fix wireless reliability problems on campus

[Ahmed Hassan]

RTS/CTS adds a handshake before each packet transmission to make sure that
the channel is clear.

Fragmentation allows to split an IP packet in a burst of smaller fragments
transmitted on the medium

http://linux.die.net/man/8/iwconfig

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 10:30 AM, Tony Biondo <tonyb at tonybox.net> wrote:

> What exactly do these settings do?
>
> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Richard Yao <ryao at cs.stonybrook.edu>
> wrote:
> > Dear Everyone:
> >
> > For reference purposes, here is a speed test of WolfieNet-Secure after
> > doing this:
> >
> > http://www.speedtest.net/result/1482432493.png
> >
> > I could not connect to WolfieNet-Secure from my current location
> > before I did that tweak, so you can consider any test done prior to my
> > tweak to have 0 bandwidth both ways with infinite ping times. For the
> > record, my wireless card is an Intel Ultimate-N 6300, so your speeds
> > will likely be somewhat slower with wireless G.
> >
> > Yours truly,
> > Richard Yao
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 9:17 AM, Richard Yao <ryao at cs.stonybrook.edu>
> wrote:
> >> Dear Everyone,
> >>
> >> If you have problems connecting to Wi-Fi on campus, try the following:
> >>
> >> iwconfig wlan0 rts 2347 frag 2346
> >>
> >> You will want to change the name from wlan0 to whatever your wireless
> >> card's name is. You might also want to put it in /etc/local or
> >> whatever your distribution's init system stores custom boot commands.
> >> It will not fix wireless deadzones like Javits 111, but it should
> >> enable you to connect to the campus wireless anywhere anyone else can
> >> connect. As an added bonus, your download/upload speeds will be higher
> >> too.
> >>
> >> I had been having issues with wireless reliability on campus since I
> >> started using Linux and this semester, the improvements that were made
> >> to campus Wi-Fi made it particularly acute. Configuring these settings
> >> fixed it for me. Now Network Manager behaves comparably to the Windows
> >> Wireless Zero Configuration. It seems that these settings were meant
> >> to deal with this exact situation and that Windows has them enabled by
> >> default. I assume Mac OS X also had them enabled by default given just
> >> how bad things are on campus without them.
> >>
> >> Let me know if it works for you. If all goes well, I will post to the
> >> kernel mailing list in a week or two informing them of the situation
> >> so we can get these settings set by default, like on Windows. i.e. You
> >> are all guinea pigs.
> >>
> >> Yours truly,
> >> Richard Yao
> >>
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