Wireless-N Networking and Linux

After installing a new Netgear Wireless-N Dual Band Router (review), I was anxious to test Linux with it. So far the results are... well... mixed.

First, the baseline. I am doing this testing on my primary laptop, a Fujitsu Lifebook S6510, with a built-in Intel 4965AGN wireless adapter. I have the router set up with both Wireless-G and Wireless-N networks, each with a different SSID. With Windows XP Professional, it detects both, connects to the Wireless-N network with no problem using WPA2 security, and gives speeds ranging from 300 Mb/sec to 108 Mb/sec. All very nice.

With Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) it shows both networks in the Network Manager list, and it connects to the Wireless-N using WPA2 with no problem. However, it only reports a speed of 54 Mb/sec. I don't know if this means it really will not connect at a higher speed, or if the Linux driver simply doesn't know how to report anything higher than that.

With Mandriva, the Wireless-N SSID did not show up in the network list, so I was not able to test it.

With openSuSE I had basically the same result as with Ubuntu.

I will do some more testing this evening, to see if Ubuntu is really getting connection faster than 54 Mb/sec, and with a couple of other Linux versions.

jw 4/8/2008