[arch-general] Trouble with RaLink RT2561/RT61

[Bram Schoenmakers]

Hello,

>From time to time, my network shows some poor performance. My 64 bit
Arch Linux box is connected with a wireless connections with a RaLink
RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI, the system is up-to-date. The symptoms are:

* Looking up a website takes very long, or it will never load at all.
Only in Chromium snapshot, Firefox loads the same page instantly at
the same time. However, some videos on Youtube load for 25% and refuse
to continue to fetch more (in both browsers).
* Kopete is unable to keep a connection with either MSN or my Jabber
accounts. They simply time out.
* SSH connections drop dead (or are interrupted for minutes). No high
traffic involved at all.

The problem does not always occur, at some days I have a good
connection, but sometimes the symptoms above occur. I suspected it had
something to do with IPv6, but disabling it did not have any effect. I
don't think it's interference either, the connection to the router is
quite healthy: normal response time, 0% packet loss (also with servers
outside my network), download rates are often at their max.

I also have a laptop with 32 bit Arch Linux installed, using the
Atheros wireless drivers. It also runs Chromium and doesn't show any
problems whatsoever, on the same network. When I run tcpdump on both
machines, I see many lines like

12:09:37.134509 00:30:3f:50:19:e5 (oui Unknown) > 00:18:f8:45:10:c3
(oui Unknown), ethertype Unknown (0x05ec), length 1530

where 00:30:3f:50:19:e5 is the wireless router (unsure about the other
MAC, I'm on a shared network). My laptop shows seems to capture much
more of these messages than my PC does, not sure whether that's a good
thing or a bad thing.

Could it be a driver issue? I'm tending to think that is the case,
actually. Any other hints are very appreciated.

Kind regards,

-- 
Bram Schoenmakers

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
(Punch, 1855)