Long distance and RTS commands on Prism 2.5 cards

[bobbyc]

Hi,
I read in a separate thread that you have good relations with Intersil and Orinoco... thus the great support for their cards. Is the ability to change the timing in the current prism cards something that is possible by firmware changes, or is it physically impossible for the card to do without being remanufactured?
Also, what is the possibility of asking Intersil if it is possible for their prism cards to hand out RTS commands to clients when in AP mode?
Is all this something that they would have to add into firmware themselves, or could you guys do it? Or is it just impossible at all?
Thanks!
Bob C

[tony]

Right now, Intersil mentioned that they do not have the necessary firmware features to allow for distance tuning. I'm not sure this will change with future firmware versions.

The RTS feature you are referring to would have to be card firmware-based, as to be compatible with other clients, which is not offered as a firmware feature in the latest releases.

Thanks!

[bobbyc]

That's kind of what I was thinking; but I guess it doesn't hurt to ask... :)
I don't expect them to make much more improvements in their firmwares, do you? I'd think that intersil will start focusing on 11a and 11g stuff and call their 11b stuff good and done with???
Bob C

[tony]

802.11b may be around for a little while longer. Their 802.11a and g cards are a joy to work with, and have some really neat and new options.

They do seem to be adding features to the newer 802.11b firmware releases, so only time will tell.

Thanks!

[bobbyc]

So I confirmed what you've been saying. I put a senao prism 2.5 at the hilltop the other day, and was working great till last night. I was surfing the net and it would take 5 seconds or so before anything would load... whether I was surfing the net or sshing into the towers. I went to the association list on the sector and noticed one of our clients' idle time was staying at 0 seconds, meaning he was downloading something.
Later in the night, I noticed the client was done downloading and the delay was gone.
So, prism 2.5 cards w/ latest firmware 1.1.1/1.5.6 don't send out RTS commands to the hermes based clients.
Bob C

[bobbyc]

Also Tony, I notice on the hostap list that people are upgrading to 1.1.1/1.5.6 so they can use wds. What is wds?
Thanks,
Bob C

[tony]

So I confirmed what you've been saying. I put a senao prism 2.5 at the hilltop the other day, and was working great till last night. I was surfing the net and it would take 5 seconds or so before anything would load... whether I was surfing the net or sshing into the towers. I went to the association list on the sector and noticed one of our clients' idle time was staying at 0 seconds, meaning he was downloading something.
Later in the night, I noticed the client was done downloading and the delay was gone.
So, prism 2.5 cards w/ latest firmware 1.1.1/1.5.6 don't send out RTS commands to the hermes based clients.
Bob C

To use RTS on Prism 2/2.5 clients, you will need to enable it on each of the client's systems. Only ORiNOCO clients will get their RTS automatically by the AP.

[tony]

Also Tony, I notice on the hostap list that people are upgrading to 1.1.1/1.5.6 so they can use wds. What is wds?
Thanks,
Bob C

WDS = Wireless Distribution System.

This is an extension that allows APs to talk with other APs, sharing data between them. This mode is also used in some client bridges as it also uses the A4 address field in the 802.11 header, allowing for full client-side bridging with the peer unit (whether it be another AP, or a client system).

This is the underlying protocol used in our StarLink PtP.

Thanks!

[usairwave]

Why were you seeing a delay while he was downloading? I assumed you had bandwidth control on the link? If you had him set to 300k or something, there should have been more delay on the radio and RTS would not have been needed.

Maybe I am missing something.

[bobbyc]

We have bandwidth control; I don't know what was really going on... my pings were fine to the tower. I just assumed that the hilltop radio was busy talking back and forth to the other client. We use dummynet at our DNS server. I asked our sys adm why we don't throttle at the AP, he said it is easier this way.
It probably is time that we set our sights on getting a larger pipe to our backbone.
Bob C