Atheros AR9382 mini PCIE card won't associate with 5Ghz network on some channels

[Ascaris]

I bought an Atheros AR9382 mini PCIE card on Ebay for my laptop. It works fine, including the wireless LED and the wifi switch, but there is one issue: It won't associate with my router on the upper channels in the 5Ghz band... I am thinking it was 159 to 165.

It seems pretty evident that the card has the location code set to something other than US; I think it is set to "world."

Is there a way to edit the firmware or get a driver to use the US standards rather than world standards? I've tried the Atheros Eeprom Tool (and several modified versions of it), but it fails to read the firmware from the card. Similarly, the TamoSoft packet sniffer tool that some people have suggested fails. When I use the region changer tool from TamoSoft, with the sniffer software and driver installed, it tells me I don't need to change the region since the special driver works on any channel regardless of what is in firmware... but the card is still not able to associate with channel 165 (for example) even with that driver loaded.

The Intel wireless card (4965AGN) has no problem associating with the router on ch. 165. If it was not causing other issues, I would just use that one... but that is a topic for another thread.

OS is Win 7 x64. Thanks in advance!

 

[sfx2000]

sounds like it's a single band card...

 

[Ascaris]

It does associate on channels below 159 on the 5ghz band. I can see the SSID of the network in the 5Ghz band on any channel, but if the channel is 159 or higher, the attempt to join the network will fail even though the passphrase is correct.

 

[avtella]

Could be region locked, as you said, if you can probably best to get a refund. Just out of curiosity, why didn't you get the Intel 7260ac? I got two of those last year for I think $30, should be cheaper now. I have actually seen it as low as $20 on Amazon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels

 

[Ascaris]

Avtella,

I got the Atheros card for about 5 dollars, shipped. I wasn't sure it was going to work completely (including things like the wifi enabled light and on/off button working correctly). They do, but if they didn't (or if there was some other issue, like the one I am having), I'd be looking to buy something else, and with that being a possibility, I didn't want to spend a lot.

Not only that, but if you go to the Intel wireless networking forum, there are dozens of threads about periodic but persistent drops in throughput and other issues with the 7260 series (thought to be a driver issue). It's all over the web. There's a long-standing bug (the data reordering issue, as they call it) that Intel has identified and supposed to have fixed in subsequent driver releases, but by all reports, it hasn't been.

I've been seeing the same behavior in my old Intel 4965agn, although I can't say it is the same issue causing it. The newest driver for the 4965agn is five years old, and there have been about 4-5 generations of Intel wifi cards in between that and the 7260-- can it really be the same bug? Seems hard to believe, but the symptoms Intel mentions in their bulletin match exactly what I am seeing.

The last thing I wanted to do was to replace one wifi card with another that has the same issue-- one that may never get fixed. Intel EOL'd the 4965agn and stopped releasing updated drivers for it in 2010. Interestingly, there is a message on their own forum dated a week before that driver was released where the problem I am having was described perfectly by another end user. I doubt very much it was the first time they'd heard of it, but even if it was, they still did not release any more drivers for it (once the issue was corrected-- if it ever was). From what I know, they let the product go into EOL without having ever released a fully functional driver (at least for Win 7 x64, which I am using).

The Atheros, by way of comparison, is using the latest driver (from late 2015), even though the chipset on the card is every bit as old as the 4965agn.

 

[avtella]

Yeah the 7260ac had issues earlier, I remember that mega thread lol, but they have been fixed driver wise which Intel had bothched earlier. I even occasionally game with the 7260 and file transfers are fast so I can assure you they fixed the drivers and disabling packet coalescing in settings fixes any latency issues one might have. However I do understand your reservations after a past experience.

$5 is a great price, unfortunate though that it's region locked any chance you can exchange it for another?

 

[Ascaris]

It is good to know that Intel has finally fixed the issue. I know it plagued a lot of people. I will definitely consider the Intel going forward, if the Atheros does not work out.

As for the Atheros card... I think it might actually not have anything wrong with it (in US region terms).

I use DD-WRT on my WNDR3700v1 router. It's set to the US region in 2.4 and 5 Ghz bands, and it allows me to set the channel up to 165 on the 5 Ghz band with 161 as the extension channel for 40Mhz channel width operation.

I normally don't use channels on that end of the spectrum; my normal WLAN is set to ch 36+40, which works fine with my Atheros card (as well as the Intel). I was just testing things out, and that was when I discovered that the Atheros card would not associate with the network at 165+161 (0r 161+165, for that matter; I have not seen any difference). My Intel 4965AGN card would associate without issue, so it seemed like a problem that the Atheros would not.

The thing I missed was that when my Intel card is associated at 165+161, the performance is abysmal. It takes several tries to fully load the web GUI for DD-WRT, and it takes 30 or more seconds to load when it eventually does work. The Intel Proset icon on the taskbar, normally green to indicate an active connection, will turn dark gray periodically, and mousing over it shows a tooltip telling me that signal is out of range (or something out of range). It will linger a while grayed like that, then go green again-- but even when it is green, throughput is dial-up slow at best, until it grays out again and brings everything to a dead stop.

In other words, the Intel card associates with the AP, giving the illusion that it is going to work, but it doesn't; the Atheros just tells me up front it can't associate, and that's that. I'm not sure that's worse than associating and then not really working. Maybe the Atheros WLAN adapter built into the 3700 doesn't like the combo either!

I did notice that in the Wikipedia list of wifi channels (shortcomings of Wikipedia noted), it does not show bonding of 165+161 as a listed 40 Mhz channel.

I tried setting the channel in DD-WRT to 161+157, the next one down from 165+161, and the Atheros associated just fine, and worked well. So did the Intel. So in reality, they both work on the same channels and fail on the same other channels.

The Intel works very well in general until it hits the driver bug (I think that's what it is)... then overall throughput goes way down. When that happens, there will be a few seconds of 100% packetloss, then a few seconds ramping up to normal throughput, then more packetloss... repeating forever. The graph on the task manager under network looks like a comb with upraised teeth. Sometimes disabling the wireless and re-enabling it on the laptop fixes the connection, sometimes not (requiring a reboot). I'm already using the latest driver Intel ever released for Win7 x64 for that card.

It happens in my desktop PC too, using a Mini PCIE to PCI 1x wireless adapter card.

That's why I replaced the 4965agn, FWIW.

Thanks for the replies!

 

[sfx2000]

I use DD-WRT on my WNDR3700v1 router. It's set to the US region in 2.4 and 5 Ghz bands, and it allows me to set the channel up to 165 on the 5 Ghz band with 161 as the extension channel for 40Mhz channel width operation.

Channel 165 is a bit odd - and some devices don't accept that channel as primary or secondary - it's outside of the upper end of the UNII-3 band, and is subject to some different rules in the US compared to other channels..