fair wireless signal but not internet connection

[sunsetgarden]

Hello,
I used to be able to get onto internet with wireless connection on my HP. Now the wireless connection seems fair but I can not connect to internet. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[sunsetgarden]

I am able to connect wirelessly to the internet with my other computer. So it's definitely not the ISP problem. I am wondering if there is anything wrong with my HP (running fedora 9), such as the wireless card or the wireless antenna or missing any drivers. Is there a way to diagnose?

I'd appreciate any suggestions and help!

[SomeDamFool]

Can you ping your router from the laptop?

[sunsetgarden]

No:
"Destination host unreachable"

Does it mean that it's the hardware problem such as the wireless card or the antenna?

btw, it's a desktop.

[SomeDamFool]

In a terminal try: lspci -v
Scroll down the output list and see if you see a wireless card listed such as:

06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company BCM4312 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at 92000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: wl
Kernel modules: wl

If so are you using network manager and can you right click the tray icon and click connection information and see what it says.

Mike

[sunsetgarden]

Thanks Mike, but nope, I did not see "Wireless LAN Controller" from the output. The only network connection output is: "00:19.0 Ethernet controller: ......", any thoughts?

[SomeDamFool]

If you use Gnome go to menu/system/administration/network and see what is showing there. You might also try: /sbin/lspci -nn in a root terminal and see if the output lists your wireless card. If you use network manager you can also right click the tray icon and click edit connections to see if there is a wireless tab and what's on it.

[sunsetgarden]

I'm using Gnome.
Under System/Administration/Network, the Devices tab lists:
Inactive eth0 eth0 Ethernet

The Hardware tab lists:
Ralink 802.11 bg WLAN --- Wireless --- wlan0 --- system
Intel corporation 82566DC-2 Gigabit Network Connection ---Ethernet --- eth0 --- system

/sbin/lspci -nn does not show the wireless card

[SomeDamFool]

Does the devices tab in system/administration/network also show your wlan card and is it active? I'm not familiar with ralink cards, do you use that card on your other computers that have wireless? I'm thinking you may have a driver problem, no driver or wrong driver installed for that card.

I have to leave for work soon, maybe someone else will be kind enough to continue with this.

Mike

[sunsetgarden]

The device tab only shows the ethernet, but no wlan card. The wireless card comes with the computer when I ordered it and is not used with my other computer.

Thanks Mike for your help.
Can anyone else chime in with any suggestions? I really hope to figure this out and be able to use internet to update the system.

[dixonstalbert2]

what happens when you are on "devices" tab and you click on New and try to set up a new wireless connection using your ralink wlan card?

[sunsetgarden]

OK. I added a new connection to my wlan card on the "Devices" tab. I restarted the computer. It's there and "Active". But I still don't have internet, such as when ping my router I got "Destination host unreachable".

When I do lspci -v, I still don't see "Wireless LAN controller".

[sunsetgarden]

Hello, I googled a little and used the following commands to find the wireless card and the driver on my machine, but I don't know how to interpret this:

# lshw
Output:
*-usb:0
description: Generic USB device
product: 802.11 bg WLAN
Vendor: Ralink
Physical id: 4
bus info: usb@2:4
version: 0.01
capabilities: usb-2.00
configuration: driver=rt73usb maxpower=300mA speed=480.0MB/s

# lsmod | grep "rt73usb"
Output:
rt73usb 31232 0
rt2x00usb 17792 1 rt73usb
rt2x00lib 43776 2 rt73usb, rt2x00usb
crc_itu_t 10240 2 rt73usb, firewire_core

I don't know what these mean. Can someone please help me understand? thanks.

[dixonstalbert2]

Is this built-in wireless on your laptop or are using an external wireless plugged into a USB port?

[sunsetgarden]

It's built-in wireless on a desktop.