Wifi connection speed issues

[ambrostan]

I have used various flavours of linux for a number of years and decided to install the latest version of LMDE on my trusty Lenovo Thinkpad R61. I have to say that I am very impressed LMDE and the only thing that lets it down (for me) are the issues I am having with the WIFI connection.

Whilst connecting and staying connected are not an issue, the connection speeds vary from excellent to extremely slow.

My laptop has the AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter fitted, which worked with no issues when I had XP installed.

It also has the Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express fitted which when connected, works with no issues.

I have read the many posts and articles about WIFI issues in relation to this particular adapter but have to admit, I find it all a bit confusing.

I have tried using Wicd which did had little effect, I have also tried Madwifi as an alternative but this seemed to be worse.

I have also added modprobe ath5k nohwcrypt=1 to my /etc/rc.local file, again with no discernible improvement.

I have arrived at the point where I think further research would be pointless. I may well have found the solution at some point but not known it!

If anyone can help, I would be most grateful.

Some information that may be relevant:

iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth1 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"WWW"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: E0:91:F5:49:89:E6
Bit Rate=48 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=35/70 Signal level=-75 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:10 Invalid misc:122 Missed beacon:0

Then this ten minutes later:
iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth1 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"WWW"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: E0:91:F5:49:89:E6
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=35/70 Signal level=-75 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:10 Invalid misc:122 Missed beacon:0

ifconfig
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0a:e4:c8:89:24
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:18

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1104 (1.0 KiB) TX bytes:1104 (1.0 KiB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1e:4c:10:2f:4e
inet addr:192.168.0.3 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::21e:4cff:fe10:2f4e/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:6501 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:6649 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:4475266 (4.2 MiB) TX bytes:947623 (925.4 KiB)

lspci

Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)