RTL8187 wireless driver

[nash black]

Hi

I've been having problems with my USB wireless card (no cable hookup on my side of the duplex )

Its a Rosewill RNX-G1 IEEE 802.11b/g wireless USB adapter

The windows driver included is for an RTL8187. I've seen some new drivers around for similar models, but not this one. It seems like they all need some work to perform properly in ubuntu.

The connection works a bit better since my upgrade to ubu 10.04, but it is still quite unrelaiable compared to its performace in XP with the windows driver.

And ideas about how to find a better driver or improve performance?

[cariboo]

A bump for the move.

[nash black]

After doing some more research, this seems to be a relatively common problem. People with older versions of Ubuntu seem to have identified this as a connection strength issue and had some luck installing wireless backport packages, but the lucid package (below) didn't do anything for me.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-wireless-lucid-generic

The connection works sometimes, but 75% of the time it will only be able to load anything from the web for the first few seconds after connecting. After this, it says that it is connected but does not seem to be receiving data. It works in the XP partition perfectly, so this is a driver issue as far as I can tell.

My laptop, which also runs lucid connects with no issues and good strength in the same room (frequently at the same time that the desktop w/ the USB wireless cannot... like now...) So the issue is definitely not just the signal.

This has been particularly frustrating because I have been trying to fix it for a month now and it is really the only thing that is still preventing me from using lucid as my primary OS. If someone could explain what might be going on or offer a possible solution, that would be HUGE.

Thanks
Nash

[Crio]

See if it helps http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...25#post9272125
There are different modifications of rtl8187 - b, l, se. Use lsusb to find out which you have.

[nash black]

---
*******@Computus:~$ lsusb|grep -i realtek
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:8187 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187 Wireless Adapter
---

There is no letter after the 8187 for mine. There is no such driver on realtek's site, but I do have the windows 8187 driver installation disk. Do you think this would work?

[chili555]

---
*******@Computus:~$ lsusb|grep -i realtek
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:8187 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187 Wireless Adapter
---

There is no letter after the 8187 for mine. There is no such driver on realtek's site, but I do have the windows 8187 driver installation disk. Do you think this would work?

What does this tell us?

sudo modprobe rtl8187
sudo iwconfig wlan0 txpower 20
sudo iwlist wlan0 scan

Thanks.

[nash black]

Here are the results. I should note that the connection is currently working...



*******@Computus:~$ sudo modprobe rtl8187
[sudo] password for *******:
*******@Computus:~$ sudo iwconfig wlan0 txpower 20
*******@Computus:~$ sudo iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:1F:33:26:51:32
Channel:1
Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
Quality=40/70 Signal level=-70 dBm
Encryption keyn
ESSID:"Palace"
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
Mode:Master
Extra:tsf=000000245589c183
Extra: Last beacon: 300ms ago
IE: Unknown: 000650616C616365
IE: Unknown: 010882848B962430486C
IE: Unknown: 030101
IE: Unknown: 2A0104
IE: Unknown: 2F0104
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: Unknown: 32040C121860
IE: Unknown: DD090010180200F0000000
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: Unknown: DD180050F2020101800003A4000027A4000042435E0062322F 00


Also, I found the driver files on the installation CD if Ndiswrapper becomes necessary...

[chili555]

Looks like it's working well! Can you click the Network Manager icon and see your network and connect?

[nash black]

Yeah, the network shows up and everything. It is actually working perfectly right now.

This is the funny thing though... it works perfectly sometimes and other times I can see the connection and it says that it is connected, but does not load web pages or updates. I'll run those commands next time its acting funny... It usually doesn't work well for more than a day.

[nash black]

Alright, it was on a roll for a while there, but its been acting up again for the last two days... One bar, but no apparent data transfer after the first few seconds. Again, it works fine in windows and on my laptop. Now when I run those three commands in terminal it returns the following message:

wlan0 Interface doesn't support scanning: Device or resource busy

I think that I'm going to try Ndiswrapper with the driver files from the windows installation disk. The USB drive isn't listed as having worked with Ndiswrapper, but its worth a shot for reliable internet