assessing a wireless link

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden%schemamania.org@localhost>]

Can someone help me interpret netstat -p tcp?  

I've noticed odd behavior in the wi0 interface in my Soekris box. Web
pages loading on my laptop frequently pause at the "same" point: there's a
hesitation after the progress bar is about an inch long.  Also remote X
sometimes feels like it's underwater, running on a 19.2 kbps line.  

I thought I'd see if I could determine if the wireless link is at fault
and, if so, which end is complaining the loudest.   

Below is the output from "netstat -p tcp  -I wi0".  I'm not sure how to
interpret what I'm seeing, or whether another comand might be more
illuminating.  My question is, basically, what is the signal/noise ratio? 
How many packets are being lost, and is that figure good or bad?  Could it
reasonably be expected to improve using different hardware, or is what I'm
seeing par for the 802.11 course?  

I'm inclined to think the hardware is fine because the ip statistics look
good.  But if I knew what I was talking about, I wouldnt' be asking here. 
;-)

Much appreciation for your insight.  

== snip ==
$ netstat -p tcp  -I wi0
tcp:
        150923 packets sent
                92968 data packets (25932648 bytes)
                1640 data packets (327864 bytes) retransmitted
                51397 ack-only packets (56737 delayed)
                0 URG only packets
                0 window probe packets
                52 window update packets
                4876 control packets
                0 send attempts resulted in self-quench
        181240 packets received
                104731 acks (for 25621999 bytes)
                4833 duplicate acks
                0 acks for unsent data
                57677 packets (6183672 bytes) received in-sequence
                565 completely duplicate packets (38781 bytes)
                0 old duplicate packets
                1 packet with some dup. data (88 bytes duped)
                13733 out-of-order packets (0 bytes)
                0 packets (0 bytes) of data after window
                0 window probes
                313 window update packets
                903 packets received after close
                1 discarded for bad checksum
                0 discarded for bad header offset fields
                0 discarded because packet too short
        352 connection requests
        15304 connection accepts
        15532 connections established (including accepts)
        15660 connections closed (including 466 drops)
        1 embryonic connection dropped
        0 delayed frees of tcpcb
        80886 segments updated rtt (of 76309 attempts)
        2018 retransmit timeouts
                82 connections dropped by rexmit timeout
        0 persist timeouts (resulting in 0 dropped connections)
        0 keepalive timeouts
                0 keepalive probes sent
                0 connections dropped by keepalive
        2003 correct ACK header predictions
        10982 correct data packet header predictions
        32778 PCB hash misses
        143 dropped due to no socket
        0 connections drained due to memory shortage
        126 PMTUD blackholes detected
        1558 bad connection attempts
        15327 SYN cache entries added
                0 hash collisions
                15304 completed
                0 aborted (no space to build PCB)
                21 timed out
                0 dropped due to overflow
                0 dropped due to bucket overflow
                2 dropped due to RST
                0 dropped due to ICMP unreachable
                0 delayed free of SYN cache entries
        292 SYN,ACKs retransmitted
        192 duplicate SYNs received for entries already in the cache
        0 SYNs dropped (no route or no space)
        0 packets with bad signature
        0 packets with good signature
$ netstat  -I wi0 -p ip
ip:
        4604045 total packets received
        0 bad header checksums
        0 with size smaller than minimum
        0 with data size < data length
        0 with length > max ip packet size
        0 with header length < data size
        0 with data length < header length
        0 with bad options
        0 with incorrect version number
        0 fragments received
        0 fragments dropped (dup or out of space)
        0 fragments dropped (out of ipqent)
        0 malformed fragments dropped
        0 fragments dropped after timeout
        0 packets reassembled ok
        572856 packets for this host
        0 packets for unknown/unsupported protocol
        4015491 packets forwarded (0 packets fast forwarded)
        4861 packets not forwardable
        0 redirects sent
        0 packets no matching gif found
        551368 packets sent from this host
        0 packets sent with fabricated ip header
        0 output packets dropped due to no bufs, etc.
        0 output packets discarded due to no route
        0 output datagrams fragmented
        0 fragments created
        0 datagrams that can't be fragmented
        0 datagrams with bad address in header
= pins ==

--jkl