Debian8: weak wifi signal on thinkpad T60 comparing with windows

[arabianights]

hi,

i have a winXP/debian8/freebsd triple boot setup on my thinkpad t60. it comes with an integrated wi-fi card. i noticed whenever i web browsing in Debian8, it takes several seconds to load a page, in windows xp, it loads/refreshes page almost immediately. i use the laptop at the exact same location at home on the same wi-fi network.

it makes me think debian8 has a weak wifi signal comparing with windows but i have no way to test whether this is indeed the case.

[ajkula66]

If your T60 sports Intel 3945ABG which was the most common wireless card in these machines, then yes, it will pretty much misbehave in any *nix distro.

Truth be told, it's an atrocious card to begin with. Moving on to something with an Atheros chipset would do you a world of good in *nix environments.

Good luck.

[arabianights]

correct, that's the wi-fi card on my T60.

i've noticed the slow loading of webpage in linux before but didn't realize it's caused by the integrated wi-fi until recently.

i plugged in a Netgear w511 wifi card pulled from my old T23, installed linux driver, seems working better now.

[ajkula66]

You can pick up an Atheros-chipped card with a FRU for under $10, a bit more if you want the "N" version which is FRU 42T0825.

Or, if you don't mind applying modded BIOS, go for Atheros 9380 which is the card that I have in all of my machines that sport a mini-PCI-e format.

[arabianights]

You can pick up an Atheros-chipped card with a FRU for under $10, a bit more if you want the "N" version which is FRU 42T0825.

Or, if you don't mind applying modded BIOS, go for Atheros 9380 which is the card that I have in all of my machines that sport a mini-PCI-e format.

thank you for the advice!

I'll look into it once I got time. to be honest, after extensive and very time consuming messing around with my old t23/t42 in previous years, now i'm just happy to have a working laptop

[jaspen-meyer]

iwconfig will tell your your signal strength. You have to be root to run that in debian.

Code: Select all

jaspen@meyer:~$ sudo iwconfig
eth1      no wireless extensions.

wwan0     no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan1     IEEE 802.11abgn  ESSID:""  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.452 GHz  Access Point:   
          Bit Rate=1 Mb/s   Tx-Power=2 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=48/70  Signal level=-62 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:136   Missed beacon:0

Note this line: Link Quality=48/70 Signal level=-62 dBm

My x61s was using the Intel 3945ABG without problems in Xubuntu 14.04.
I replaced it with an Intel 5100 today but haven't used it enough to know if there is any difference, and didn't
run any benchmarks to measure changes.