Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 17:37 Post subject: worked, but need help still...
Crimson Fox,
Thanks so much for your tip. It worked.
However, I'm still having some issues. You see the reason I wanted the D-Link firmware, was the same reason I wanted dd-wrt on my router. To up the power setting.
If anyone cares to read the following, I would appreciate it as I just don't know what to do. Hopefully nobody will mind I'm hijacking this thread, but the thread IS about the 652, so technically I guess I am not. Anyway, for about 5 years I've had a Motorola 850WR850G Wireless G router. Worked ok out of the box, but had some reception issues in my basement. Once I dd-wrt'ed the router, I upped the power setting and reception issues reduced considerably. While I never had full 54 Mbps speed I did have a stable connection, always on, just in the 2-34 Mbps range. This, I could live with.
While routers have kept dropping in price, I figured going N would improve my speeds on my basement PC. Saw the Trendnet 652 on Black Friday for $19.99 and picked it up along with the Trendnet 644 wireless N adapter for $12.99. Figured under $35 for N, how could you go wrong?
Set everything up out of the box and I've had numerous probems with the 652. No matter the channel tried, static IP or automatically chosen IP, encryption or no encryption, or other settings, it had problems. Basically the problems were that the adapter would see the router and two things would happen.
1) It would sometimes connect but sometimes not.
2) When it did connect my speeds were ALL over the place. It would never go above the 150-180 Mbps range and then immediately it would drop to 81 then 56 then 1 Mbps. Then it would spike again up over 100 and then cycle again...81...56...1...180+...81...56...1. It would never stay stable on speed.
Now that the DLink firmware is on it, I've set WPA2, transmit power is high, and the adapter seems to connect to the router MUCH better, but the speed issue remains. It's not as bad as before but it is still varying from 13 Mbps to 81 Mbps .
To be honest I'd rather have my dd-wrt'ed Motorla router that was considerably more stable at the 24 or 36 Mbps speed rather than having the constant speed jumps this router is having.
My main issue/question is just what the heck is going on? Is it physical interference or wireless interference or something else?
One thing I didn't notice about the router until I put the D-Link FW on was that this router is 2.4 Ghz. I don't have any 2.4 phones so I just don't think that interference is my issue - within my house. On that note, I did use Net Stumbler to try and figure this out and my signal to noise ratio is about 36. I think this is ok, but maybe indicates some competition with a 2.4Ghz neighbor phone? Any help here is appreciated, as I'm about ready to take this N router back. However, the next issue I have is if I get another N router, will it work any better? Maybe a 5 Ghz range router would be better for me? Again, any suggestions are appreciated.
One other note, when setting up the Trendnet and on the phone with Trendnet tech support, they gave up and told me to return the router! Which, I did. But the 2nd one was/is doing the same thing...so it wasn't a faulty router, it's something else...which leads me to the interference issues. Note, my router is on my first floor.
Using the DLink FW, right now it is set on auto channel seek (or something like that). That's the feature that finds the best channel. I find it interesting that it finds and uses Channel 2 over the others you mentioned. 1, 6, or 11 are the ones that have the least overlaps, so like I said, interesting that the FW/device chose Channel 2.
I'll have to keep digging as to whether it is wireless interference or physical interference.
sounds like interference to me too. I believe this is only a 2x2 MIMO antenna design router, but still should do better than a G on signal.
did you turn off your old router? Set the router to N only? Try both your old G client adapter and your new N client adapter.... some client hardware works better than others.
Channel, I personally think you should avoid Auto and try 1,6,11 and see which works best and stay fixed.
Should all now work using OpenWRT KAMIKAZE (bleeding edge, r13670)... I can now flash my TEW-652BRP using the native web firmware update interface and run OpenWRT! This is the latest subversion development release as of this posting.
Works = firmware packages and flash is easy The Ethernet cabled works fine, but we are still trying to get the ar9102 wireless chip working.
Last edited by RoundSparrow on Fri Dec 19, 2008 16:00; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 0:49 Post subject: Trendnet
Round Sparrow, how do I install OpenWRT on the trentnet TEW? I found your post ON Openwrt forums but I am not a member over there. Is OpenWRT anywhere near as good as DD-wrt? Also does this mean we will have support for DDwrt soon?
Should all now work using OpenWRT KAMIKAZE (bleeding edge, r13670)... I can now flash my TEW-652BRP using the native web firmware update interface and run OpenWRT! This is the latest subversion development release as of this posting.
So would i be able to flash the lastest OpenWRT KAMIKAZE to my DIR-615 R.C1 using the native web firmware update like how you did to the Trendnet routers?
The DLINK Firmware definitely exposes MANY, MANY more configuration options then the Trendnet firmware. I recommend the DLINK firmware until we can get dd-wrt working.
To get the DLINK fw on my router, I just downloaded the DLINK firmware from their website, and changed the firmware id at the end of the .bin file to AP81-AR9130-RT-080609-05 using a hex editor since it is a binary file. I then just flashed it using the upgrade firmware page in the Trendnet admin. My understanding is that you can also boot the TEW-652BRP in recovery mode and it will then only accept the *original* DLINK firmware.
(edited to correct incorrect fw string)
Last edited by bkmartin on Thu Dec 18, 2008 14:58; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 07 Apr 2007 Posts: 15 Location: Iasi, Romania
Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2008 14:33 Post subject:
It fails here. Why? I've edited using a hex editor, but it fails.
I've changed to AP81-AR9130-RT-080609-05, but it still fails. What should I do?
BTW, doesn't editing with Notepad still produce the same effect?
If you edit with notepad, who knows what it will do with all of the nulls, cr, and lfs in the file. Generally, notepad is expecting ascii text.
Not sure why your binary edit did not work, it should have if you didn't otherwise modify the file. Check your pm...
I mentioned AP81-AR9130-RT-080609-05 because that is the firmware id for the Trendnet 652BRP and it verifies that string is at the end of the firmware to validate the fw is for that router. The DLINK firmware has an identical format except it uses a different fw id.
(edited to correct incorrect fw id)
Last edited by bkmartin on Thu Dec 18, 2008 14:57; edited 1 time in total
So on the OpenWRT side we have mastered flashing the router and the Ethernet cabled works fine. However, the wireless interface is still not working.
The ath9k Linux driver doesn't recognize the AR9102 chip on the router. I've posted to the ath9k mailing list without stirring any interest. the madwifi drivers also don't work.
The ath9k driver has reference inside to one AR9100 device... but can't find much about it. I'm working right now with the OpenWRT trying to figure out how we can get lspci working on this Trendnet to determine the device ID of the AR9102 chip on the router.