Setting up two D-Link cards with home networking

[Z3r0]

I wrote this guide as my two D-Link adapters were annoying me and refusing to work

My setup

--------

Router -> ethernet -> PC with DWL-G630 -> wireless -> Laptop with DWL-G510

Drivers

-------

You should get these drivers for the DWL-G630 Rev D

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Communi...ver&FileID=2644

or here http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Communi...tName=GN-WP01GT

You should get the these drivers for the DWL-G510 Rev C

http://www.ralinktech.com/drivers/Windows/...506_0.0.1.6.exe

Install them

The Ra-Link Drivers select Raconfig to manage the wireless not Wireless Zero config & when prompted for Wi-Fi or performance mode, I selected Wi-Fi

After installing, reboot, if you can't see your wireless card in the control panel go to system settings and install drivers manually

Firewall

--------

Firstly, we need to test if we can ping the PC from the laptop

control panel -> Windows Firewall - On

Advanced tab -> select your wireless network card -> settings -> icmp -> allow incoming echo request -> YES

in the command prompt of the laptop type (start -> run -> command)

ping -n 10000 192.168.0.1

This won't work at first :)

Just leave it running

Set up the IP addresses

-----------------------

Now, these two cards are very fussy

For the main PC connected to the internet

go to control panel -> network connections -> This computer connects directly to the internet

and follow the rest of the prompts to complete setup

now right click on the wireless adapter go to properties

IP address 192.168.0.1

Subnet 255.255.255.0

Gateway 10.0.0.138 #your router

Preferred DNS 10.0.0.138 #your router or ISP DNS IP

Alternate DNS 192.168.0.1 #anything here or ISP DNS IP #2

For the laptop which is going to connect through our PC select

This computer connects through another PC

and follow the rest of the prompts to complete setup

now right click on the wireless adapter go to properties

IP address 192.168.0.2

Subnet 255.255.255.0

Gateway 192.168.0.1 #your gateway PC

Preferred DNS 10.0.0.138 #your router or ISP DNS IP

Alternate DNS 192.168.0.1 #anything here or ISP DNS

Set up the driver options (Most are defaults, but for clarity they are stated)

-----------------------------

right click on the wireless adapter go to properties -> configure ->

for the RT61 (DWL-G510) you have these options

Adhoc wireless mode -> 802.11 G only

Auto Channel Select -> Disable

Auto Reconnect Mode -> Enable

B/G Protection -> Auto

CAM when AC Power -> Disable

Country Region 11A -> Ch(36-48) #for australia #this shouldn't matter as we don't use 802.11A but set it correctly for your regulatory domain

Country Region 11G -> 1 - 13 #for australia

Fragment Threshold -> 2347

Frame Aggregation -> Enable

IEEE802.11h -> Enable #something to do with interferring with fighter jets and their radar, please enable unless you want to get blown up :p

Local Administration MAC Network -> empty

Network Type -> Infrastructure

Power Saving Mode -> Fast_PSP (power save mode)

Radio On/Off -> Enable

RTS Threshold -> 2346

SSID -> SoftAP-0

WMM Capable -> Enable

for the Atheros AR5211 (DWL-G630) you have these options

802.11b Preamble -> Long and Short

Map registers -> 256

Network Address -> Not present

Power Save Mode -> Normal

Radio On/Off -> On

Scan Valid Interval -> 60

Setting up the Config Programs

-------------------------------------------

I'll just state how to set up managed mode as it's slightly faster than Ad-Hoc (I got 2.1MB/s compared to 1.8MB/s max throughput this is much faster than the 0.8MB/s I was getting before updating drivers) and it has WPA/WPA2 as opposed to WEP which is insecure, but just change the settings to ad-hoc to get ad-hoc, you can even use 54Mbps with it too :)

Enabling TX burst pushes the speed up to 3MB/s

For the RT61 -> system tray -> Right click on RA icon -> Access point mode

Wireless Mode -> 802.11G Only

TX Rate -> Auto #or 54MB/s

Channel -> 11

SSID -> SoftAP-0

B/G Protection -> Auto #May not be needed since we are using G only but set on anyway

TX Burst -> Ticked #proprietory but gives speed increase

No Forwarding among wireless clients -> Unticked

Preamble -> Short Preamble #smaller preamble with each frame

Hide SSID -> Unticked

Beacon(ms) -> 60

Use Short Slot -> Unticked #makes internet lose packets I think

TX Power -> 100% #tbh you can use lowest power and you will get around 1.4Mb/S not much lost

Auto Channel Selection at next boot -> Unticked

For the Atheros AR5211 -> system tray -> right click on atheros icon -> Open Gigabyte client utilty

Click on smart setup 3 -> The wireless access point should appear, click ok

Set up a profile name then go to advanced

Transmit power level -> 100% #once again lower power may be better for a laptop and won't cause much speed decrease at close range

Power Save Mode -> Normal #set to normal so that it comes out of powersaving mode for large file sizes and transfers faster but then goes back to max power saving mode

Network Type -> Infrastructure

802.11b preamble -> long & short

Wireless mode -> Tick 2.4Ghz 54Mbps & Extended range #you can check or uncheck 11Mbps, doesn't matter

QoS -> tick #why not? :p

Now it all should just work, check your command prompt to see what's going on, you should be seeing ping replies

WPA can be set up quite simply

for the RALink go to Auth Vs Security and WPA2-PSK -> encryption type can be AES (more secure)

for the Atheros go to Security tab and set it up there

----------------

Here are two wikis (with info about WPA/WPA2)

One for the AR5212

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/index.cfm?a=wiki&tag=ar5212

One for the RT61

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/index.cfm?a=wiki&tag=rt61

Enjoy :)

Edited May 15, 2006 by Z3r0

[Z3r0]

> email to Atheros

Hi there,

I have found something intriguing with your latest drivers for the Atheros 5005G / 5211 chip

I've had a play around with the Atheros based card, the D-Link DWL-G630 rev C and i've determined that it only uploads at 1Mbit/s under windows in G mode, but downloads at 3Mbit/s, I then installed linux and used the Atheros drivers on that and it uploads and downloads at 3Mbit/s, suggesting a problem with the windows Atheros drivers

This is for driver version 4.2.0.374.02 under windows and linux madwifi drivers

[4294688.757000] ath_hal: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.

[4294688.758000] ath_hal: 0.9.14.9 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413)

[4294688.853000] ath_rate_sample: 1.2

[4294688.860000] ath_pci: 0.9.6.0 (EXPERIMENTAL)

[4294689.451000] ath0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps

[4294689.451000] ath0: 11g rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps

[4294689.451000] ath0: H/W encryption support: WEP AES AES_CCM TKIP

[4294689.451000] ath0: mac 7.8 phy 4.5 radio 5.6

[4294689.451000] ath0: Use hw queue 1 for WME_AC_BE traffic

[4294689.451000] ath0: Use hw queue 0 for WME_AC_BK traffic

[4294689.451000] ath0: Use hw queue 2 for WME_AC_VI traffic

[4294689.451000] ath0: Use hw queue 3 for WME_AC_VO traffic

[4294689.451000] ath0: Use hw queue 8 for CAB traffic

[4294689.451000] ath0: Use hw queue 9 for beacons

[4294689.451000] ath0: Atheros 5212: mem=0x42000000, irq=185

Another problem with the windows drivers, it states that it is within the Danish regulatory domain which is incorrect and the power level sometimes states 63mW this needs to be fixed.

I'd also like to suggest or ask that you contact D-Link regarding their lack of updates for their drivers, since you yourselves do not distribute the drivers directly and we, the customers, rely on the card manufacturers to provide us with your latest drivers.

I look forward to your response

---------------

No doubt I won't receive a reply

On another note there's a bug with the Rt61 1.1.0.0 windows drivers which causes a BSOD, i've posted on their forum but there's been no reply in a week and the bug has occured 3/4 times since then

http://61.222.76.235/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2190

I believe it is either a problem with the ApUI.exe (Access point program) or WPA2-PSK on the unit, use ad-hoc mode which uses RaUi.exe and WEP otherwise you will get random crashes

I will wait a few more days to see if the problem reoccurs in a few different setups and then I will email ralink (and of course it probably goes to /dev/null but nevertheless you can only but try!)

[Z3r0]

I feel I should also mention these bugs with the RT61 chip and the 1.1.0.0 drivers from Ralink, otherwise people will spend ages pulling their hair out like I did

With RaUI, setting wireless mode to G (or anything else) forces it to B and can only be fixed in the control panel, meaning loss of connectivity

Occasional 2000 pings to router+packet loss (interspersed with 1ms pings) after moving the router further away, fixed by disabling TX Burst mode

Ping to router for RT61 is 30ms for RT61 but with Atheros card AR5005G was 1ms, both in same room, setting router to range mode instead of performance(speed) mode fixed this (router is netgear WPNT834 with MIMO, same problem experienced with d-link G604T but couldn't fix it)

Also there's a bug when changing to WPA/WPA2-PSK modes (between TKIP and AES) etc, the wireless mode goes to B/G and has to be changed in the control panel to G (still states G in RaUI)

[Z3r0]

Just as one final note, it could have been the ping spikes were caused by enabling broadcast RIP packets, i'm not too sure, check this one out yourself if you have the same problem

[Z3r0]

Damn, hate to do it but posting AGAIN on my own monotonous thread

Email to RaLink/Dlink and Atheros/Dlink regarding a lot of issues I think are important

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have recently, unfortunately purchased a D-Link DWL G510 rev C (Australia), which integrates one of your products, the RT61 chipset

The D-Link drivers for this card are appalling and cause frequent dropouts, if I am able to connect at all, they are old and D-Link don't seem to keep up to date manufacturers drivers,

I found your website (quite difficult actually) and installed the latest 1.1.0.0 drivers for your card,

I have posted on your forum but have not received a reply or acknowledgement that my problem is being looked into

I have attempted to contact the moderator Paul Lin but that is disabled, Ralink do not provide a technical support email so I have forwarded this to any that I could find, apologies if this reaches you in error

There are lude posts on your forum which are not being moderated

I will get to the gist of what I am trying communicate to yourselves,

The latest drivers incorporate RaUI, the Ralink configuration utility for connecting to a wireless access point, the drivers have various problems, after a reboot or return from hibernation the wireless network continuously disconnects/reconnects, unless I 'activate' the connection manually and change the wireless mode to 'G' in the control panel, it also randomly resets to the wrong mode (B or B/G instead of G) when the following is done, connecting to a wireless network (manually using activate) or changing WPAPSK/WPA2PSK modes, I have to keep changing the setting in the control panel to G mode

The card seems to not work properly with wireless zero configuration, there are ping spikes every 100 or so pings to 1800ms, this I am not able to remedy despite changing all the settings available, this problem does not occur when using RaUI

So where does this leave me? messing around with RaUI every time my PC reboots so that I can get it to connect

Another problem I had when I used the D-Link drivers and initially when I used your drivers was that my ping to my router (both my old D-Link G604T and my new Netgear WPNT834) was 30ms above that of the G630 Rev D Atheros 5005G chipset for no apparent reason, I haven't been able to recreate this problem unfortunately so cannot diagnose what caused it or how I fixed it

There are also further problems with ApUI, when running my computer as an access point for my laptop (which has an Atheros 5005G chipset as above)

I have had these errors

STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x00000000,0x00000002,0x00000000,0xF80D413B)

RT61.sys - Address F80D413B base at F8090000, DateStamp 440fa1ff

STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x00000008,0x00000002,0x00000000,0xF81E5B1D)

NDIS.sys - Address F81E5B1D base at F81CE000, DateStamp 41107ec3

Both computers are connected via 802.11g only and WPA2-PSK with 128bit encryption

The strange thing about this problem is that I can transfer 1GB of data with no error, but as soon as my wife starts browsing the net on her laptop, sometimes within 10 mins, sometimes more, the PC crashes

Hopefully someone can look into these problems, provide a fix and contact D-Link regarding updating their drivers.

Please could you add support for the user manually setting Preamble mode and finally, you&D-Link advertise the card as being a 54Mbit/s card, I would love to know how you get 54Mbit/s as I cannot achieve this even with the router and wireless card next to each other, transferring data from the from the PCI Card -> wireless -> router -> ethernet -> PC my maximum throughput is 2 to 3 Mbyte/s at best, considering this is a 54Mbit/s card I should get approximately 6.75 Mbytes/s throughput at best, even without a router when in Ad-Hoc mode the best I can achieve is 3Mbit/s, additionally upload speed varies from download speed, perhaps this is a driver bug or part of the 802.11g standard that I am not aware of?

I look forward to a response and a driver update

Kind regards

Dear Sir/Madam,

As a customer I am very disappointed in your lack of driver updates, especially as other card manufacturers have managed to obtain them from the chipset manufacturer, please find gigabyte branded Atheros Drivers for this chipset below

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Communi...tName=GN-WP01GT

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Communi...ver&FileID=2644

[Z3r0]

I received a reply from Ralink, they were pretty fast and courteous, they have also silently sent out a new driver update available here:

http://www.ralink.com.tw/drivers/Windows/I...606_0.0.2.0.exe

Also, here is my reply to the tech support email

-------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for your prompt reply, I have noticed your new uploaded drivers for the RT61 dated 16/05 and will give them a try

Ans: Can you run your adapter with Ralink's configuration utility? DWL G510 VID/PID is not added on Ralink's utility. How do you run it? Please advise.

The setup utility runs fine, but does not correctly install the drivers

These have to be manually installed in the control panel by selecting ralink -> wireless PCI card 1.1.0.0

FYI this is a DWL-G510 Rev C. (Australia)

Device Instance ID is

PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0302&SUBSYS_3C091186&REV_00\4&13699180&0&5048

Hardware IDs

PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0302&SUBSYS_3c091186&REV_00

PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0302&SUBSYS_3c091186

PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0302&CC_028000

PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0302&CC_0280

Compatible IDs

PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0302&REV_00

PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0302

PCI\VEN_1814&CC_0280

PCI\VEN_1814

PCI\CC_028000

PCI\CC_0280

Matching Device ID

pci\ven_1824&dev_0302&subsys_923016ef&rev_01

But of course you would already have this

RaUI (Ralink config utility) works perfectly except for the crazy problem of resetting the 'adhoc wireless mode' setting (which should really be 'wireless mode') in the control panel whenever the connection is reset, the computer is rebooted or I change WPA2PSK settings as stated before

I have had my PC connected adhoc with WEP for a week fine with this, I have also had my PC connected to my router through WPA2PSK fine for a week now, apart from the disconnects every 30 minutes :)

---------------------------

Ans: Can you configure your PC as attached file shows? That will generate a memory.dmp when blue screen occurs. Please upload this file to ftp site:

Regarding ApUI and the random crash problems, I am uploading the files to your FTP now, 5 kernel crash dumps and several minidumps, I have compressed them with 7zip as this provides good compression for my low bandwidth, please use this to decompress ( www.7-zip.org)

I have sent five crash dumps that I managed to create using ApUI.exe, the first crash is with rt61.sys and the other four are with ndis.sys

The problem is sporadic and I can't determine the cause and does not occur with RaUI.exe

With the last crash my settings were:

wireless mode 802.11b/g

tx rate auto

channel 6

tx burst enabled

b/g protection auto

preamble short

tx power 100%

control panel

adhoc wireless mode b/g mix

auto channel select disabled

auto reconnect mode enabled

b/g protection auto

country region 11a 36-48

country region 11g 1-13

fragment threshold 0 #appears to be set by ApUi for some reason? setting to 2346 is out of bounds (32 to 2346!)

frame aggregation enabled

IEEE802.11h enabled

network type infra

power saving mode fast_PSP

radio on/off enabled

WMM capable enabled

Atheros card

54mbps enabled

11mbps enabled

XR enabled

QoS enabled

I have several ideas as to what is causing the crashes, at first I could recreate them but I can't anymore, so here is some speculation

1. Is it a tx burst problem? i.e. incompatibility between AR5005G XR and RT61 Tx Burst?

With XR disabled the crash still occurs, so I assume no.

Tx Burst- enabled or disabled several times has caused ApUI to crash 3x, but I can't recreate this problem anymore

2. Is it a preamble problem? i.e. incompatibility between the AR5005G which has two modes, short&long and long and the RT61 which has two modes short and long?

Premable- Atheros uses short&long or short, ralink uses short or long

When the connection is reset several times/renegotiated, we crash, could this be incompatibility with wireless B mode? Atheros sending long packets and crashing RT61?

Once again I can't recreate the problem anymore

3. Could it just be an RaUI problem as ApUI works fine

RaUI works fine in both ad-hoc and infra for one week with exactly the same settings, why does ApuI not work in master for one hour? it crashes without any user interaction when transferring data, this problem still occurs randomly

-----------------------------------------------------------

Ans: If the performance is poor and you are using Ralink's utility, please capture the screenshot of Status, Statistics and About page on Ralink's utility when test is running.

Regarding this

I have concluded the following,

The maximum throughput of my wireless network is 2.8Mb/s or 3Mb/s with the RT61 as Access point, this is from RT61 to AR5005G

The Atheros Windows drivers version 4.2.0.374.02 are faulty, upload speed from AR5005G send speed is 900kb/s, there is no such problem with the Linux madwifi atheros drivers which transfer at 3.3Mb/s and I have emailed Atheros regarding this and I have not received a reply. Note the increased linux driver speed gave a small speed boost to the RT61 to increase the tx speed to 3.3Mb/s.

When RaUI is used in Ad-Hoc mode the RT61 card sends at 2Mb/s and the Atheros card sends at 750kb/s under windows, why is Ad-Hoc mode slower than Access point mode for the RT61 chipset?

When connected to a router, my new Netgear WPNT834, network speed decreases significantly (this is in RaUI Infra mode) RT61 sends at 1.2Mbit/s (AR5005G sends at 800Kbit/s), is this a feature of Wireless G networks? (i.e. maybe only one device can use the channel at a time as the speed doubles when I connect one via ethernet?)

The router is set up as follows:

channel 6

I have tried wireless G/up to 126mbit/s/up to 240mbit/s modes

Both cards state 54mbit/s connection

I have a attached the screenshots as requested these are the stats after uploading 200mb and downloading 200mb, with ethernet - router - ethernet and wireless - router - wireless setups

Note the increased CRC errors when the second wireless card is connected to the router? why is this?

Note the atheros cards stats show significantly less CRC errors than the RT61 card? why is this?

I should also mention that with this router there is a 'wireless interference' setting of range, adequate speed and performance and performance, when set to performance I can't connect with the RT61 even at close range, why is this? but the AR5005G can connect to it

Additionally I have experienced problems in Linux with the latest drivers custom compiled for the 2.6.15 ubuntu kernel when in Ad-Hoc mode I find that the connection will go up but the two machines aren't able to ping each other when both under linux, I have to keep toggling channels until it eventually works, last night under windows the AR5005G could ping the RT61 but the RT61 in linux could not ping the AR5005G in windows? peculiar?

If you have any more queries don't hesistate to ask

Kind regards

[mrQQ]

Hello Z3r0,

i keep getting BSODs even with latest version of ralink drivers. Were you ever able to solve this issue?

thanks

[mlazatin]

Hi to all the posters,

Thank you for the valuable information you have given. I have the same wireless card, DLINK G510 rev C.

I am able to copy a single 4GB file over WiFi between two PC's over a Netgear 614 router without any problems. The other PC uses a realtek wifi card.

However, my PC keeps on crashing when using Bitcomet. Whenever I use Bitcomet, my computer would crash. I believe the crash is triggered when too many connections are trying to be opened.

What do you think?

-mlazatin