Centrino 11g connection problems

It's not Centrino that determines whether this stuff works, it's the IEEE. So if you happen to have a laptop that doesn't seem to work well with a router, you have two options: get a new IEEE-certified PC Card, or get a new router.

MIMO does two things: it increases speed (to 35 Mbps), and it increases range (to 1500 feet). There is very little improvement (if any) when it comes to things like interference, channel conflicts, and signal congestion.

Chuckle. When the first Centrino chips appeared, Intel made a huge mess of the driver, which broke plenty of wireless access points. Netgear was among the unlucky few to get burned by the first Centrino devices. For example see the "changes" section below:

than wait for Intel to get it together, Netgear and others tweaked their wireless access point and router firmware to work with Centrino. The previous issue of Network Magazine had an article that covers some of the Centrino history and roadmap for the future:

that's not the article I was thinking about, but it does have some interesting things to say about Centrino.

Sorry, no personal experience yet.

Not exactly. It's the Wi-Fi forum that certifies compliance to a multitude of IEEE 802.11(a->z) mutations:

that they only certify the base 802.11a/b/g compliance. WPA, WPA2, and WMM are seperate certifications:

Or just update the firmware, operating system, drivers, etc.

Funny. But you knew what I meant - Centrino follows the standards groups.

I doubt it -- there's no specific driver update for the notebook.

I'm sure Intel will be gratified to know that their Centrino marketting conspiracy is under the control of the Wi-Fi Forum which is currently dominated by their wireless competitors. Also, the IEEE does not currently have a certification program. They publish and hammer out the specifications, but other organizations provide the certification.

Centrino is a marketing term. It applies to a growing number of late to market chips. Not all the chips come from Intel. The first and

2nd generation of Centrino wireless chips were from Philips and Texas Instruments.

No driver updates for an unspecified model Sony Vaio laptop? I can't find an update without the specific model number. Maybe by the Intel Pro 2200BG card, but we don't know the current driver version. Can I test drive your crystal ball?

I would be entertained to know how you determined that there was a compatibility issue from the sparce original evidence. There are such problems, and I slammed into one last night, but they are rare. Most devices claiming to do 802.11g will function adequately if one turns off all the enhancements and performance boosters. However, Wi-Fi certification does not insure that things will be *TOTALLY* compatible. For example, last nights horror story was a Linksys WUSB11v2.8 and my office DLink DI-614+. I couldn't get the 64 bit WEP key to work with either hex or ascii. When I rolled back the WUSB11 driver from 2.1 to 2.0, it magically started to work in hex only because Dlink and Linksys use different ascii to hex conversion algorithms. Both devices carry Wi-Fi Forum compliance to 802.11b. So much for compatible.

However, there are still interoperability problems:

they can't even blame the right company.

Anyway, what I'm trying to demonstrate (between visitors, phone calls, interruptions, IM's) is that that a Wi-Fi sticker does not guarantee very much beyond the basic 802.11a/b/g features and functions. Those usually work. It's all the other stuff that is NOT involved in the certification ordeal process, that usually causes interoperability problems.

(Intel/PRO

troubles

I also have the 2200BG and it works flawlessy with WZC with my Linksys wap or wrt54.

laptop

connectivity.

opinions:

No idea what you are talking baout. Did I say Centrino was anything but a marketing term?

Jeff, this is not a support call. Not every Usenet questiosn requires a detailed analysis of the facts -- if they did, then we would need to start charging for that. If an older Sony laptop is flaky, the general guidance would be: consider a newer PC Card that matches your router. Someone who has a Linksys router and a Linksys PC Card is in more control over the connection than someone with Centrino, period, case closed.

My 2200BG works well with my old Linksys WAP11 v1.1, but of course that's 11b. :-(

What other APs are known to work well with Centrino "G" NICs? I can keep buying and returning APs I guess but recommendations would be preferred. It sounds like the WRT54 should be fine. Which others?

thanks, Jonathan

Sorry, I misread your statement of: "Funny. But you knew what I meant - Centrino follows the standards groups." Since the topic was the Wi-Fi Forum group, I assumed you meant that Intel followed the Wi-Fi Forum. I didn't realize you mean't the IEEE.

I do charge. Try sending me your problem via email and you'll get my consulting rate card. The difference is that everyone learns from Usenet answers. Only the person with the problem learns for email. I consider that consulting and charge for it.

Incidentally, I just bludgeoned Google into disclosing how many posting I've made on Usenet over the years. 10,400 with my current email address and about 2,000 with a previous one. Does that qualify me as a writer?

All one manufactory is generally good advice. I prefer all one chipset and don't worry about the manufactory, but that's a bit difficult as some Linksys PC Card products have as many a 4 mutations each with different chipsets. However, we can assume (wrongly) that LInksys does regression testing on obsolete and out of production products. However, to play it safe, methinks instead of just buying from one manufactory, one should throw out even the old Linksys stuff and purchase everything brand new, from the same product series, and of course with the Wi-Fi Forum certification sticker. Yep, that's safe and certainly give "more control". Actually, we can dispense with the Wi-Fi Forum compliance tests as if everyone followed your advice and purchased everything from one manufacturer, we wouldn't need cross vendor standards compliance testing.

Looking around the office, I note a rather wide variety of manufacturers, chipsets, technologies, and vintage. I even have an old 802.11 (1 and 2 Mbit/sec only) Teletronics PCMCIA card that's still in use. Everything talks to everything else. I did have to play with the preamble length and timing to deal with timing issues, but that was easy.

I have some customers with the Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG card in their laptops. No Vaio, but several no-name and two HP something laptops. I had to install updated drivers to get it to not hang during long downloads. Instead of the laptop vendors drivers, I used the one from Intel:

*+XP+Home+Edition&submit=Go%21I'm not sure if this was such a great idea as one of the HP laptops is still hanging. If I knew the exact model number of your Vaio, I could check the Sony web pile for updates. (careful, there are two model numbers on each laptop. Printed near the right hinge and on the bottom serial number sticker. They're used in different parts of the web pile).

If you've gone through multiple access points, the most likely cause is something wrong on the laptop.

My current favorite is the WRT54G. Discussions in this group and other mailing lists have convinced me of the value of alternative firmware for the WRT54G. I haven't inflicted my customers with non-standard firmware yet, but my experiments at home with a WRT54Gv1.1 are doing much better than expected. If the stock firmware doesn't do the trick, try one of the 4 or so alternative versions and see if things improve.

*+XP+Home+Edition&submit=Go%21> I'm not sure if this was such a great idea as one of the HP laptops is

Thanks for all your suggestions and comments.

-Jonathan

Nope.

Intel states there is an incompatibility problem with the 2200BG and

some access points

Worth disabling the 2200BG default power saving mode to see if this

helps stability.