I have a Atheros wireless card that always seems be prone to poor signal. I have Atheros card inbuilt in my laptops antenna which you would think would get far better signal that what ever small internal antenna the pcmcia card might have.

My card never connects at a given speed that is 54mbps,it seems that signal is extremely low and dropping out.Where as the pcmcia adapter will go down to around 24mbps and report good signal.

I thought if the wireless card has poor signal, it opts for a lower bandwidth to compensate? Is this what my Atheros card should be doing, but for what ever reason it is failing to do so?

Please help