Atheros Wireless N Card - Page 6

The SparkLAN card is finally working in Vista x64
But be it only on 20Mhz bandwidth channel.
Surfing works at full speed, have not done any speed tests with fille transfers yet, am too scared now

I modded the INF and what I thought was the 11n enable tweak actually disables it.
So it looks at this early point the Atheros has issues with 11n and possibly my Marvel chipset based router.
I did disable 40Mhz channel support on the router which still caused Parity errors, in G band even with the router's 40Mhz bandwidth turned off the connection was still @ 300Mbps.

I may need to find a Atheros based router to test this theory.
Anybody with a spare DLiink 655 ?

BTW Celly, to enable 11n on your i4965 card you have to have a 11a based router, the 4965 only does 11n on A band, Intels WLAN friendlyness at play here, couldn't possibly give the user the choice of which band to use.

Just thought I'd let you guys know I've just installed the Gigabyte GN-WI06N-RH wireless N cards in an Inspiron 9400 and 1501, they both work perfectly and so far have displayed excellent network speed and coverage in conjunction with my D-Link DIR655, the difference over the original wireless G card is unbelievable, it used to be impossible to stream a 1080i film, now I can stream 1080p and browse, chat, download etc at the same time.

So for anyone that's wondering whether to upgrade, do it!

PS Both laptops are running vista x86.

Yea, I am still tempted to buy the gigabyte card and give it a go (Cross my fingers and pray etc..)
Just wondering if I should wait until the 855 comes out... our try a 655 and see if it is flash upgradeable like some earlier reviews of it said it might be.

Hmmmmm, what to do.

D>

It looks like if you want an Atheros 11n WLAN card for the lapppy an Atheros based router as well.
I would have though Atheros would make the card usable with other chipset based routers but maybe at a lower throughput.

At this time if you have a non Atheros based router a broadcom based WLAN card is your better option.

I'll wait till the Dlink 855 is out as I like using 11a over 11b even with it's lower range.

To have the i4965 go past the 130/144Mbps you need to have a router that support A band (5Ghz) Then you'll be able to enjoy 11n (draft). Your DLink 655 is a G band only router (2.4Ghz), Intel want the masses to shift to A band for 11n as G band can be busy with other routers, phones etc. But all this does is make A band busy, it would be better to have a dual band 11n router and let the user decide what to use. 11n needs 2 channels to run @ 300Mbps, each channel has 20Mhz bandwidth. My Buffalo uses channels 6 and 2 to run in 11g and 36 and 40 in 11a Using 2 channels double the congestion. A band is relatively quiet so it means less interference, but A band also has less range. The Dlink 855 can do both 11a and 11g in draftn if it ever comes out. Hopefully less Geek Speak As for the SparkLAN now many hours have pased and no parity errors Running at 130Mbps is no biggy for surfing, 54Mbps is fast enough for this.

Good to hear you have the sparklan at least working.
This is in vista64 correct (I have vista32).

I guess I will wait until the 855 comes out then from what information you and others have, I will decide on the brand (gigabyte or Sparklan) of card to get.

Just have to play the waiting game now.

D.

Yes Vista x64, but the Parity errors happen in both Vista versions.

I've done a quick review on the 2 cards, as they are with my experience.
A proper one will follow if/when I get hold of a Dlink or any other A/G Atheros based router.

Nice read pieter.

I guess I will just wait a month(or more) until the new Dlink comes out then go from there.

D.

I've hinted at maybe testing the new upcoming Gigabyte GN-BR30N-RH
One can but try, or like you said next month the Dlink 855 must surely be out.

My ESX runs just peachy off of a fresh install in Windows. About to try it out in Linux again and maybe mac if I have time.

ftp://ftp.dlink.com/Wireless/dwa552/...rivers_130.zip

FWIW: Driver for Atheros AR5008 Wireless Network Adapter 6.0.3.107 dated 07/23/2007

Well as a follow up to my last post, seems all is not well, when I restart my 9400 I get a parity error during windows startup, if I go into safe mode and uninstall the atheros driver I can then reboot and load windows, install the drivers and it works fine, but every time I reboot it errors.

Do any of you know anything about this problem, and if it can or will be fixed with new drivers? Any help would be appreciated

//EDIT

I see this has already been discussed on previous pages, can anyone bottom line what's been found out to save me reading all 8 pages please

Read, Forrest, Read

What make, model and chipset based router do you have.

I think this could be the issue, a non Atheros based router could be causing the parity errors.
I know people with Atheros based routers have no issues my Marvell based router causes the WLAN to crash the system with the parity error.

I can get the card to behave for a while in 130Mbps but still get an occaisional Parity error (enough to go back to my Broadcom card)

Hey Pieter,

I just got the GN-WI06N today, and have a DLINK 655 N router, which has been working fine with my Dell 1505 Wireless mini-pci-e in my Vostro 1700, under Vista x86.

Now, for some reason, I cannot get the Gigabyte card to connect at "N" mode, it only connects at "G" mode. I check in the STATUS page of my DIR-655 and it shows my PC connected at 11g, not 11n.

The driver for the Gigabyte card has barely any options to set, and none of them seem to allow me to tailor whether to connect at g or n speed.

BTW, if I set my DIR-655 to "N only", then the Gigabyte card stops seeing my DIR-655 altogether. It's almost like the Gigabyte card is stuck in "g only" mode.

Any ideas?

I have the D-Link DIR 655, which AFAIK is Atheros, but my parity happens at startup, before it even attempts to connect to the router, which is just even more puzzling, as a control I turned off the router and it still crashed Do you know if the sparklan has the same problem, im guessing it would as its the same chip and therefore, i assume, the same drivers :/ I've sent a support request to gigabyte, but judging by the poor English on their website and the lack of any FAQs for the card, I'm not expecting much.

Is your 655 set to 40Mhz Bandwidth mode ?
The router needs to use 2 channels to broadcast in 11n (how it works)
Use either channel 1, 6 or 11 as the main/prime channel and let the router autochoose the secondary one (if this is an option)
If this is not done then the router will just be an 11g router.
And you are correct there are no controls with an Atheros based driver.
A pity there are a few I can enable with some mods to the INF.


Yikes, this is even worse than what I get, at least I get to the windows screen and I get the Parity error after the WLAN card logs in to the router.
Usually as soon as I try to surf and the data starts to flow.

My 11g only tweak, was working like a charm all Friday and Saturday but now it only works for a few hours at a time.

We need more people to post their experiences with their setups be it good or bad.
I'm in discussion with the US/Europe agents regarding this, and they have been given the link to here.
Hopefully they can sort out a driver fix for this parity error problem.
The Gigabyte and SparkLan cards are supposed to be Draftn 2.0 which means they are also supposed to be inter-make operational so they should work with any 11n brand router and in 11n mode.

The Gigabyte and SparkLAN cards both use the AR5008E (or driver wise AR5008X) chpset.
The AR5008E = PCIe express
The AR5008 = PCI
Basically the same chipsets but different interfaces.
I know thw SparkLAN uses the AR5133 Radio, I assume the Gigabyte uses the same but cannot be 100% sure.
Driver wise the Gigbyte cards in the INFs are seperated out from all the other Atheros based cards (lots) , which seems quite weird.

Glad to see you're so actively trying to get it fixed, and as you say the more people we can get discussing it, the higher it will be on their list of priorities. I just wonder how quickly the Atheros team can churn out new drivers, do you have any past experience of Atheros and how often they release drivers?

I really believe that there is some underlying fault with their drivers as I have this exact same problem with their GN-WIO1GT that uses the AR5005GS chipset.

It is so bad that I cannot use the card (been sitting in a box since a week after I bought it)

I really was hoping this would be better, but I guess we just have to hope that they do something now to fix the problem.

Here is to hoping

D.