[Prism54-users] wg511 lockups and problems

[Robert Brewer]

I'm also seeing problems with my Netgear WG511 card.  It's at least a
year old, so
it's not a hardware versioning issue.

I see two failure modes.  Under normal use, every day or two it will
get into a state
where the TX led is almost solid on.  I can usually clear this condition
by setting the interface down and then up.  However, it will typically come back
within an hour or two, so rebooting seems to clear it "better."  My normal
usage pattern is some web surfing and email now and then.

A failure mode I am seeing recently when I tried some P2P traffic
occurs within an hour or two.  The green link-state LED goes off and
on in about a ten second cycle.  It
seems like the card may be resetting, or reacquiring the link.  I can also 
correct this by taking the interface down and up again, but it will come back.

It's interesting to note that I can receive video from my mythtv box onto
the laptop with the WG511 for 2 hours straight without seeing any 
issues.  Since this is mainly 1 direction
and the P2P traffic is balanced in both directions, maybe there are driver
problems when collisions occur, or the queues get larger, etc.

I previously used a D-link AP that only supported 802.11b, and saw
some occasional
issues with my WG511 (like every week or two).  
Now that I'm using a Linksys WRT54GS (with 802.11g)
the problems seem to happen much more.  Unfortunately, the D-link died a couple
weeks ago so I can no-longer do back-and-forth testing.

I'm running Debian sid, kernel 2.6.11, prism54 firmware 1.0.4.3.

-Rob
-- 
Robert W. Brewer