Working USB WiFi?

[December]

Hi All,

I really am at my wits end with WiFi in Fedora. I have 3 USB Wifi cards, all have some problems. Before and upto Fedora9, wireless worked beautifully with my old Linksys dongle.

Linksys WUSB11 - Support removed from latest kernel!

Level One (has RTL8187 chips) - Only shows 2 networks in Fedora here, and very low signal strength even when right next to the router - in Windows I see over 30 networks. Transfer speed is painfully slow, and drops the connection every few hours, requiring the dongle to be unplugged and plugged back in again before it works.

TPLink TL-WN821N - Someone on an other forum said they had a lot of luck with this with another Linux distro, but although Fedora recognises it, it never actually makes a device from it, so is useless.

I have been trying to get Wireless working for months now, it is really frustrating.

Could anyone recommend a USB WiFi dongle that:

1) Works out of the box in Fedora 11
2) Shows real signal strengths (not under 50% for every network as my RTL8187 based one does) and sees closer to 100% of networks (not 2 out of 30 as the RTL8187 does).
3) Does not require unplugging every few hours to keep it working

Please only suggest hardware you actually own and use on a daily basis with Fedora 11, not something you might have read in another forum or website, or something you are using on another distro (I am guessing that's how the TP Link was suggested to me, which does not work at all in Fedora).

Thanks loads for any help, hopefully I can afford one more USB dongle, then I can actually have working WiFi.

[Sagitter]

Linksys WUSB11 - Support removed from latest kernel!

Which version do you have?
Do you try to install windows driver with ndiswrapper?

TPLink TL-WN821N

Do you try to install windows driver with ndiswrapper?

[December]

Thanks for the suggestion, it's a WUSB11v4

I had tried that for the wusb11 when I was on Fedora 10, but it was really problematic and I never managed to get it working. Maybe I should re-examine that again. I hadn't tried the TPLink with ndiswrapper.. worth a go. I hate the thought of having to install Windows drivers, just seems to un-linux :-( and the one time I tried it on the wusb I spend hours on and it never got anything working.

What I am really looking for is a USB card that works with drivers in the Linux kernel, not windows ones, although I will try the windows drivers, the though had not even occurred to me, I was looking at places like linuxwireless.org where there does seem to be support for the TP-Link in much newer kernels then Fedora has in it's stable repo.. does anyone know if it would be worth trying to manually install a recent kernel? I guess that would seriously screw with my Nvidia drivers.

[JEO]

No need to install newer unsupported kernels. Compile and install compat-wireless. It will install the latest possible wireless modules (slightly more than 50 modules). Another thing to note: in F10 the default was 4k stacks in the kernel. Now in F11, they have done an about face and it it set for 8k stacks. So ndiswrapper tends to work better with windows drivers. Specifically, the RTL8187B that I have works a lot better on F11 using ndiswrapper than it did on F10 using 4k stacks (it would hang the system when try to connect). When using the native linux rtl8187 driver with this card my experience parallels yours, it produces a very weak signal as seen at the router, so the range is extremely limited.

[Y7iiie]

Edimax Wireless Hi-gain USB adapter, model # EW-7318USG
Its one of those plug-in and forget devices. Uses an RT73 chipset.

The drivers are already in the kernel. You don't have to:
1) compile anything; no <ndiswrapper>, no <madwifi>, nothing
2) go build any other kernel, nor modules, nor any <compat-wireless>

I am running MythDora 10.21. That is F-10 with MythTV 0.21. Here is some stuff
from my system:
--------------------------------------------------------------------

[mythtv@onyx ~]$ lsmod | egrep -e "rt[72]"
rt2500usb 21376 0
rt73usb 23680 0
crc_itu_t 5760 1 rt73usb
rt2x00usb 12160 2 rt2500usb,rt73usb
rt2x00lib 33536 3 rt2500usb,rt73usb,rt2x00usb
rfkill 11288 1 rt2x00lib
mac80211 173668 2 rt2x00usb,rt2x00lib
cfg80211 23816 2 rt2x00lib,mac80211
[mythtv@onyx ~]$
[mythtv@onyx ~]$
[mythtv@onyx ~]$
[mythtv@onyx ~]$ uname -a
Linux onyx.hominy.org 2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686 #1 SMP Tue Dec 16 15:12:04 EST 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
[mythtv@onyx ~]$ cat /etc/issue
MythDora release 10.21 (Brown Out)
Kernel \r on an \m
--------------------------------------------------------------------



Has an external screw-in antenna.

They are currently in-stock at Newegg for $25.00 Go search Newegg for that model # and read the 142 reviews.

[Gödel]

Here's another usb wifi dongle that plugs and plays in linux (using rtl8187 driver)

$ lsusb | grep Wireless
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0846:6a00 NetGear, Inc. WG111v2 54 Mbps Wireless [RealTek RTL8187L]

[December]

Thanks for the info Jeo, I will give ndiswrapper another go.

Y7iiie, great thanks. I'll see if anyone has it around here.

Godel, I already have an RTL8187 based card and it's terrible.. is yours working well? If so, that might actually point to it being a problem with this specific card, maybe other 8187 based cards work too?

[Gödel]

Originally Posted by December

Godel, I already have an RTL8187 based card and it's terrible.. is yours working well? If so, that might actually point to it being a problem with this specific card, maybe other 8187 based cards work too?

Yes mine works well since ~Fedora 8. Prior to that I do recall problems and used to use ndiswrapper (which wasn't easy since the windows driver wouldn't work in fedora's default 4k stack 32bit kernel back then) Looks like you've been unlucky with that particular model, maybe it's a different chipset revision.

[alfonso_V1]

Hi I've been reading with interest, Just purchased an EDIMAX EW-7711UAn USB wireless adaptor and I dont see a named driver in the wireless network setup for it. FC11. anyone any ideas ?

[Gödel]

Originally Posted by alfonso_V1

Hi I've been reading with interest, Just purchased an EDIMAX EW-7711UAn USB wireless adaptor and I dont see a named driver in the wireless network setup for it. FC11. anyone any ideas ?

Enter this command in a terminal:

udevadm monitor --udev --environment

press return and then plug the adaptor in. Post the output.

[alfonso_V1]

[brian@lrs ~]$ udevadm monitor --udev --environment
monitor will print the received events for:
UDEV - the event which udev sends out after rule processing

UDEV [1255028339.402008] add /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.2/usb1/1-6 (usb)
UDEV_LOG=3
ACTION=add
DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.2/usb1/1-6
SUBSYSTEM=usb
DEVTYPE=usb_device
DEVICE=/proc/bus/usb/001/007
PRODUCT=7392/7711/101
TYPE=0/0/0
BUSNUM=001
DEVNUM=007
SEQNUM=1122
ID_VENDOR=Ralink
ID_VENDOR_ENC=Ralink
ID_VENDOR_ID=7392
ID_MODEL=802.11_n_WLAN
ID_MODEL_ENC=802.11\x20n\x20WLAN
ID_MODEL_ID=7711
ID_REVISION=0101
ID_SERIAL=Ralink_802.11_n_WLAN_1.0
ID_SERIAL_SHORT=1.0
ID_BUS=usb
ID_USB_INTERFACES=:ffffff:
DEVNAME=/dev/bus/usb/001/007
MAJOR=189
MINOR=6
DEVLINKS=/dev/char/189:6

UDEV [1255028339.463100] add /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.2/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0 (usb)
UDEV_LOG=3
ACTION=add
DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.2/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0
SUBSYSTEM=usb
DEVTYPE=usb_interface
DEVICE=/proc/bus/usb/001/007
PRODUCT=7392/7711/101
TYPE=0/0/0
INTERFACE=255/255/255
MODALIAS=usb:v7392p7711d0101dc00dsc00dp00icFFiscFF ipFF
SEQNUM=1123

UDEV [1255028339.484271] add /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.2/usb1/1-6/usb_endpoint/usbdev1.7_ep00 (usb_endpoint)
UDEV_LOG=3
ACTION=add
DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.2/usb1/1-6/usb_endpoint/usbdev1.7_ep00
SUBSYSTEM=usb_endpoint
SEQNUM=1131
DEVNAME=/dev/usbdev1.7_ep00
MAJOR=250
MINOR=25
DEVLINKS=/dev/char/250:25

UDEV [1255028339.560497] add /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.2/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0/usb_endpoint/usbdev1.7_ep81 (usb_endpoint)
UDEV_LOG=3
ACTION=add
DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.2/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0/usb_endpoint/usbdev1.7_ep81
SUBSYSTEM=usb_endpoint
SEQNUM=1124
DEVNAME=/dev/usbdev1.7_ep81
MAJOR=250
MINOR=6
DEVLINKS=/dev/char/250:6

UDEV [1255028339.581967] add /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.2/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0/usb_endpoint/usbdev1.7_ep04 (usb_endpoint)
UDEV_LOG=3
ACTION=add
DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.2/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0/usb_endpoint/usbdev1.7_ep04

[Gödel]

It's an ralink chipset, unfortunately not supported by the r2x00usb driver.

From a quick google, looks like you need the rt2870 driver, google "rt2870 edimax" for howtos, eg

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=67761

start a new thread if you have compile errors etc, since this is a little off-topic now.