Wifi

This page is intended as a collection point for all things WiFi.

Connection Speed

Users have reported[1] a wide range of download speeds over WiFi. This is logged bug # 140 in the bug tracker. This is not an easy problem to fix without identifying the cause of the problem, particularly since wi-fi performance will be affected by other devices on your network, and neighboring sources of interference.

A suggestion for improving connection speed is to disable power-saving

sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off

Depending on the situation, this may help.

Unable to connect

Network manager is the application used to provide the GUI interface for wireless. It will sometimes get confused, and fail to re-connect after the connection has been lost. The easiest fix to try is right click on the network icon, and disable-wireless (then re-enable). If that fails, you can try removing the connection settings (edit connections), rebooting, and re-connecting. This is a problem which is also seen on desktop machines, the bug is most likely in Network manager.

Hotfix4 beta 3 includes an updated wifi driver which ought to fix this problem.

Currently (7th November 2011) the wifi driver does not appear to support 802.11e QoS so make sure this is disabled on your access-point/router... (can anyone confirm this?)

Note: on my Pandora Network Manager Popup suggests to tap the usual (concentric-circle-segments) icon to select a network. However, the icon shown at the bottom of the screen is that of two computer screens.

Terminal wifi configuration

Sometimes, you may wish to bypass network manager and configure the wifi directly. See Wireless from the Terminal for some guidance on how to do this.

WiFi LED

As of Hotfix3, the wiFi LED (3rd from the left) will probably not come back on after entering low power state. This is logged as bug # 144

A hack to make this work is provided with the bug report,but be aware that this is untested and could break your system.

HotSpot Tethering

Android phones running 2.2 and above provide the option to share a mobile network connection using WiFi. This is tested for connecting to the Pandora and works (at least with a HTC Desire).