Sick of crappy wireless, suggestions?

[Neal Becker]

I have bcm4318.  I've got wireless working with windoze driver, but it's
very unreliable.  I've had enough.  Can anyone suggest an add-on card for
my laptop that will work well with FC6, natively?

[Knute Johnson]

> I have bcm4318.  I've got wireless working with windoze driver,
> but it's
> very unreliable.  I've had enough.  Can anyone suggest an add-on card for
> my laptop that will work well with FC6, natively? 
I'm not being a pain here but I've asked this question several times 
on this list and have never gotten a good answer.  I would really 
like to get WPA working on my laptop.  When I had FC4 and part of the 
time I had FC5 I could get it to work with ndiswrapper and 
wpa_supplicant.  About half way through FC5 I couldn't find a combo 
that worked anymore.  I took FC5 off of my laptop because of the 
problems with wireless.  It would be really nice to have it working 
and I would gladly buy any new wireless card to accomplish that.

If by some bizarre chance you turn up a solution of a site or have a 
wireless epiphany I would love to hear about it and I'm sure there 
are many others that would too.

-- 
Knute Johnson
Molon Labe...

[lostson]

On Sun, 2006-12-31 at 08:24 -0500, Neal Becker wrote:
>  I have bcm4318.  I've got wireless working with windoze driver,
> but it's
>  very unreliable.  I've had enough.  Can anyone suggest an add-on card for
>  my laptop that will work well with FC6, natively?
>   
 When using the windoze driver have you tried a higher stacked kernel ?
When I built my drivers using ndiswrapper with just the stock FC kernel
I would get crashes but when rebuilding my kernel and going with a
higher stack I do not get these crashes any longer. 
-- 
lostson

http://www.lostsonsvault.org

[Philip Walden]

Neal Becker wrote:

> I have bcm4318.  I've got wireless working with windoze driver,
> but it's
> very unreliable.  I've had enough.  Can anyone suggest an add-on card for
> my laptop that will work well with FC6, natively?
>
>   
>  
I have been happy with MadWiFi native Linux driver which supports 
Atheros chipsets. It is available from the livna repo if you use yum.

I use a D-Link DWL-G630 Wireless-G Notebook. Adapter. It has been rock 
solid for me. My only complaint is a bug that loses the IP address when 
recovering from a suspend. A deactivate-reactivate brings it back.

http://madwifi.org/

List of cards supported by driver: http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility

[Dave Sampson]

Hey folks,

I feel your pain... good thing I don't value my time or else I would be 
poor. I learned alot in my wireless hunt. But if I were to do it again I 
would

1. not buy the first card that comes on sale
2. look for a store the caried the right card instead of trying to get 
the card to fit my machine
3. Consider using EBAY to get the right card when most mass distributers 
don't cary linux friendly stuff.
4. Be verry drunk when I pay for the expensive cards.

ok. So what card to get? I'll drive you to a list. not the only list, 
and not guranteed but it makes sense. why not make your list from the 
pre-selected cards listed in the dirsto

Desktop > Admin > network > NEW

Select device type: Eg ethernet card
If you don't see your card in the list then click on OTHER CARD and 
click forward

Under Adapter is a list of close to 90 different cards. this list a full 
list, not just the device type you selected. So there is your list.

One thing I wanted was a text printout of this list so I can research 
and cross out obselet ones or highlight pcmcia cards. If I was genious I 
could find the file that holds these selections... but I'm not so I 
couldn't.

But maybe printing out a list of network kernel modules might help as 
well..  doing something like a

$ls ./ > modules.txt     

in the modules directory with networkm adapters might help

So I hope that answer helps you on your quest to find something that 
works...

Some of these links might help
http://www.linuxcompatible.org
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/fedora-linux-hcl-hardware-compatibility-list/
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HCL


And finaly, anything that works with Redhat should work with fedora... 
maybe start your search here.
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/hwcert/


THEN, you can come back to the group and share what you have learned to 
help others make decisions... it's tough breaking trail at first, but 
then you find others appreciate the help as much as you would have.

Cheers



Knute Johnson wrote:
> > I have bcm4318.  I've got wireless working with windoze
> driver, but it's
> > very unreliable.  I've had enough.  Can anyone suggest an add-on card for
> > my laptop that will work well with FC6, natively?
> >     
>
>  I'm not being a pain here but I've asked this question several times 
>  on this list and have never gotten a good answer.  I would really 
>  like to get WPA working on my laptop.  When I had FC4 and part of the 
>  time I had FC5 I could get it to work with ndiswrapper and 
>  wpa_supplicant.  About half way through FC5 I couldn't find a combo 
>  that worked anymore.  I took FC5 off of my laptop because of the 
>  problems with wireless.  It would be really nice to have it working 
>  and I would gladly buy any new wireless card to accomplish that.
>
>  If by some bizarre chance you turn up a solution of a site or have a 
>  wireless epiphany I would love to hear about it and I'm sure there 
>  are many others that would too.
>
>

[thomas cameron]

On Sun, 2006-12-31 at 08:24 -0500, Neal Becker wrote:
>  I have bcm4318.  I've got wireless working with windoze driver,
> but it's
>  very unreliable.  I've had enough.  Can anyone suggest an add-on card for
>  my laptop that will work well with FC6, natively?
>   
Do a search on eBay for "802.11g mini" to see all the mini-PCI cards out
there.  I use an Intell 2200 and it Just Works(TM) once I download the
latest firmware.

Thomas

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

"Knute Johnson" <knute(a)frazmtn.com&gt; writes:
> >I have bcm4318.  I've got wireless working with windoze
> driver, but it's
> >very unreliable.  I've had enough.  Can anyone suggest an add-on card for
> >my laptop that will work well with FC6, natively?
>
>  I'm not being a pain here but I've asked this question several times 
>  on this list and have never gotten a good answer.  I would really 
>  like to get WPA working on my laptop.   
I have a worthless bcm4318 also (bcm4319 actually, which is even worse
in terms of how much futzing one has to do to get it to even work
unreliably.)

What I did was get a slightly overspec-ed cardbus card with an atheros
chipset and a small external magnetic antenna that I stick to the top
of the LCD.  The RX and TX signals are great compared to the BCM.  I
now have no more problems getting a signal from outside the house.
Even esoteric things like ipv6 work (unlike the ndiswrapper bcm
solution which only worked for ipv4, and badly at that).

The card:

         http://www.ubnt.com/super_range_cardbus.php4

I can't find a better site right now, I think I only paid $10 or so.
It is a 3cm magnetic base and 16cm tall with a few meters of cable
terminated in an mmcx connector.

         http://www.radiolabs.com/products/antennas/2.4gig/2.4-mobile3.php

The price on the card and antenna vary wildly, so if you shop around
you can save quite a bit.

I've been extremely happy with the combination and how solid the "ath"
drivers are.

-wolfgang
-- 
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht                http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/

[Bill Davidsen]

Thomas Cameron wrote:
>  On Sun, 2006-12-31 at 08:24 -0500, Neal Becker wrote:
> > I have bcm4318.  I've got wireless working with windoze driver, but it's
> > very unreliable.  I've had enough.  Can anyone suggest an add-on card for
> > my laptop that will work well with FC6, natively?
> >
>  
>  Do a search on eBay for "802.11g mini" to see all the mini-PCI cards out
>  there.  I use an Intell 2200 and it Just Works(TM) once I download the
>  latest firmware. 
Yes. I have the 2200 in my ASUS 1681 and it works. With everything 
encrypted all to hell, works.

However, I have several other laptops, and I could make a list of PCMCIA 
cards which **don't** work. I would really like a recommendation for a 
USB card which does work, because I could use it on several machines 
(including old desktops), give some to the kids, etc, etc.

Working in FC6, preferably.

-- 
Bill Davidsen
   He was a full-time professional cat, not some moonlighting
ferret or weasel. He knew about these things.