OS upgrade Wireless downgrade

[InTheWoods]

I just upgraded an old p3 from Vec 5.8 to Vec6.0 standard. It has a D-link wireles card with an atheros chip in it. It worked fine with ndiswrapper before the upgrade. But now connects and loads at a terribly reduced rate. I downloaded and installed new Windows drivers for it to no avail.

Code:

ndiswrapper -l
netathw : driver installed
device (168C:0023) present (alternate driver: ath9k)

The ath9k is listed as an alternate driver. I see that it is a native linux driver on my system.

various ath9k files exist in these directories

Code:

/lib/modules/2.6.27.12/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/
/usr/src/linux-2.6.27.12/drivers/net/wireless/ath9k/

Does Wicd use the native linux driver by default?

I should also note that in Wicd "Preferences > WPA Supplicant Driver" the only choice that works at all is "wext"
And that I get excellent results sitting beside this machine with my laptop. Though of course laptops do have better anttenae then Desktop wireless cards.

So my two major questions are:
How can I use the native driver?
And how can I improve my speed? (the connection was good before)

[InTheWoods]

I have fixed the reception problem. We had done some cleaning so I moved the modem up 3 feet back to where it was on top of a TV. Signal quality improved from 41/100 to 76/100.

I was also sabotaging myself by trying out the new or a different driver whenever I did get a connection.
Turns out you need to reboot when you install a new driver

Previously you issued the command

Code:

service ifplugd restart

but ifplugd does not exist in Vec 6.0

I imagine I just had to restart the Wicd daemon. But I did not.

Thanks for the place to think out loud. It helps,

<solved>