Thinkpads Forum

I have a T61p with the Intel AGN card. Wireless has always seemed slow (my daughter has it at college) but she brough it home for Christmas and it is torture waiting for pages to load that my T41 loads in seconds.

Any ideas? (Vista business OS, power set for max performance).

Thanks

Can you tell us what specific card? I have the Intel 3945 a/b/g card, and it performs very well (after I worked out the numerous power issues). I have an Intel 4965 a/g/n card to try out, but I cannot yet comment on it. ... JDH

Intel 4965AGN. Has this card been OK?

Generally they are supposed to be OK.

One thread in Experts Exchange had these points:
(a) Make sure you are using the Vendor (Lenovo) drivers and use the latest driver.
(b) There is a thread in the LinkSys forums about the 4965 card and LinkSys N wireless routers. Take a look a that:

http://forums.linksys.com/linksys/board ... d.id=33874

(c) And then there is the age old advice from ThinkPads.com: Uninstall the wireless driver, uninstall Access Connections, shut down, restart, install the latest wireless driver and check.
... JDH

Thanks. What a PITA! I guess I'll loose AC first as that usually seems to improve things. If that fails, I may be able to convince her to downgrade to XP!

Oh, by the way, I'm using a Netgear WAG302 AP and FVS338 router and she uses a Netgear FWAG114 wireless router at college.

Have you eliminated other sources for this problem, like the web browser?
Long time ago, Netscape (4 or so) started to act up and took several seconds to render/display any website. I removed it and reinstalled it and it worked fine again.

Keith - I am not saying to avoid Access Connections, merely to try without it to see if that changes anything. There is a setting in the newest versions of Access Connections in the Wireless Tab under Advanced that affects Wireless power management. I had to disable that on my Intel 3945 card and found a significant improvement in stability (although my symptoms were different than yours). ... JDH

sktn77a wrote:Intel 4965AGN. Has this card been OK?

I have three x6x ThinkPads with 4965AGN cards and they all run fine, however I am not using (and would not never by choice use) Netgear access points/routers.!

Cheers,

Bill B.

Keith, Vista defaults to enabling IPv6 and the "teredo" drivers to run that over IPv4 systems. In XP, the default is OFF. So the two OSes are going to deal with ALL internet routing differently, and some routers don't like handling IPv6 and the Teredo tunnelling at all. I'd suggest look up disabling Teredo, get rid of it unless you are using IPv6 for some reason, and see if the system runs faster.

HelloSailor:

Thanks for that input........ whatever it means

I'll look up "Teredo" and "IPv6" (never heard of them before). and see what I can find out!

Keith-
IPv4 means Internet Protocol version 4. v6 means Version 6.

Your computer makes all "internet" connections based on the internet protocol address (IP address) of other computers, pretty much like dialing phone numbers.

IPv4 uses "quartets" of numbers, like 198.162.100.100 to identify other machines. Because there are so many devices--it has "run out of phone numbers" so to speak. While this is being juggled, it is being replaced by IPv6, which uses octets--eight groups of three numbers each--instead. This allows older machines to keep their older addresses, the same way that your phone number may work locally without an area code. Or, you may need to dial an area code, or 10 or 11 digits, depending on how cheap your telco has been.

Teredo Tunnelling Protocol is supposed to push the new larger packets through older routers, which don't understand the longer IPv6 addresses. In theory, it means you can reach the new machines on the older routers--but not all older routers support it. And even if they do--it is an "extra" service running on your computer that may cause problems. In my case, it breaks WiFi connectivity, apparently because it interferes with the way encryption is handled.

One day IPv6 will be standard and (like Win3.x<G>) people will just tell you to throw out your old router or computer NIC. But for now--most of us don't need it, and can safely disable it.

hellosailor wrote:One day IPv6 will be standard and (like Win3.x<G>) people will just tell you to throw out your old router or computer NIC.

Both IPv6 and teredo tunnelling will not cause any problems with devices which are properly compliant with the existing (and long standing) IETF IPv4 standards.

If devices are not working with IPv6 packets (etc) in an IPv4 mode, they are simply faulty at the IPv4 level, and should be replaced for that reason alone.

Cheers,

Bill

Well, I can ping distant sites with low latencies and my download bandwidth (according to RoadRunner speed test) is the same on all my computers. However, browsing websites (not google, but most others) is much slower on the T61p than the T4x (using the same wireless network at home).

Whatch'all think???

Bill, most or many of the former Bell telcos use Westell brand routers as standard equipment. DSL customers may have no choice in the matter, except to throw it out and buy something else.

Guess what popular telco-branded wireless home/small business routers have a problem using WPA encryption when TTP is active? Yup. That's lots of non-compliant equipment, but it isn't going to be thrown out so quickly. The router is "needed", encryption is "needed" TTP and IPv6 are not. Not yet.

So the solution really is, for now, for many, to simply kill Teredo. After all, XP systems don't use it by default. Vista does, but as a provision for the future--not because it is needed.

By the time it is needed, there'll be other reasons to buy a whole new generation of hardware. Heck, maybe even 802.11n.<G>

Well, no progress yet. I did see, on an e-bay ad, an auction for a T61p with the AGN card ("n disabled"). Would disabling the n functionality improve a/g wireless performance?

"Would disabling the n functionality improve a/g wireless performance?"
Can't see that it would. If the machine isn't connected in .n mode, why should it matter? And if it can and is connected to .n equipment...it should only be faster.

I'd check with the seller and see WHICH card they have and how/why they think they disabled ".n" mode, I don't recall that option in my own setups here, fwiw. But that should be vendor-specific to the card.

Thanks, I just got a response from the seller (IBMfactoryOutlet) saying this is how they come configured from Lenovo. I don't think that's the case but I'm not sure I'll get a reliable response from this particular seller.

If they are factory configured with "n" disabled, that might suggest that particular WiFi card has a draft .n firmware in it--which doesn't work, so they're disabling it. Might or might not be upgradeable to the current standard, if that's been set yet.

Yes, the 4965 AGN card is a "draft N" card. So if IBM disable the "draft N" functionality, then it's not likely to be that causing my problems on A/G, I guess (?)

Funny, that's the same on I've got and I haven't seen any Lenono Updates to disable "n". I think the only access to control that here is by the Device mangler [sic] options, where one of the property choices is to disable "n". (Which I've selected, now that I found it, since I have no "n" router.)

Funny though...I'd still be curious to hear why they are disabling it now. Intel was pretty clear about shipping updates to support "n" once a standard was released.

hellosailor wrote:If they are factory configured with "n" disabled, that might suggest that particular WiFi card has a draft .n firmware in it--which doesn't work, so they're disabling it.

No, the 4965AGB card was a specific lower cost-to-market version of the 4965AGN card, to replace the earlier 3945AGB card, which Intel had stopped manufacturing.

Cheers,

Bill B.

I'm confused, Bill. I thought he was talking about the AGN card?