Slow WiFi transfer speeds and dropped network connections on AppleTV 1st gen.

[kenroy]

Running OpenELEC 2.99.3 and I'm experiencing slow WiFi transfer speeds and dropped network connections on AppleTV 1st gen. This is on an 802.11n 2.4Ghz WPA2 network where the AppleTV is less than 10 metres away from the AirPort Extreme Base Station. The wlan0 network interface sporadically dies and I'm not seeing any messages in the logs as to why. All I can do at this point is to restart the atv to get it back on the network.

[dagwieers]

Unfortunately the reverse-engineered b43 driver does not support 802.11n (even not on 2.4Ghz) and throughput is quite low. After debugging and a discussion with the linux-wireless developers, my conclusion was to remove the wireless NIC from the system and only use a wired connection. Here are my notes regarding the b43 driver:

• Driver b43 performance is not good (+- 2.0MB/sec)
  • iwconfig reports b43 is only doing 802.11bg (not 802.11abgn)
  • Developers confirmed that b43 does not support 802.11n http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireless.general/103677
  • alternative Broadcom wl driver is unstable (crashes, freezes)
  • Driver has no power management capabilities either
  • Generates about 85 interrupts/sec when idle
  • Given the poor state of b43 driver + no bright forecast I ripped it out (Dag)
  • When dumping traffic I found very strange DSAP/SSAP traffic on wlan0 !!

Feel free to investigate and fix the driver ;-)