bcm43xx wireless stops periodically.

[David G. Miller]

"Arthur Pemberton" <pemboa at gmail.com> wrote:

>You guys are lucky, I can't even get the darn thing to connect to my
>> >AP. Though the driver seems to be working.
>> >
>  
>
>> Same here but ndiswrapper works just fine.
>>
>> When bcm43xx was first released, I chased the problem to a timing issue
>> between my AP and bcm43xx for authentication.  If I run my AP open (I
>> know, really bad idea), it connects just fine.  If I use a WEP key,
>> bcm43xx times-out before the AP responds.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Dave
>  
>
>
>
>Exactly what seems to be happening to me. How did you setup
>ndiswrapper? I am not really familiar with it.
>
First, you have to make a choice.  The livna repository has an RPM that 
you can install through yum.  To the best of my knowledge, livna has 
been doing a good job of keeping ndiswrapper current whenever a new 
kernel appears (it has to match the kernel version).  The other option 
is to get the source (http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/) and 
re-compile ndiswrapper whenever there is a new kernel (make clean; make; 
sudo make install).  I went with compiling my own because I like knowing 
what's going on.  Perhaps some other contributors to the list can chime 
in with their recommendations.

Either way, you now have a built copy of ndiswrapper installed.  Now you 
need a copy of the Windows XP driver for your NIC.  The files are 
available from a variety of locations on the 'net or you should have a 
driver CD that came with your laptop or wireless NIC.  See 
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?Installation for how 
to "install" the Windows driver files so that ndiswrapper can find them.

Once everything is in place, you need to edit /etc/modprobe.conf.  
Remove or comment out the reference to bcm43xx and add something like 
"alias eth1 ndiswrapper".  After modprobe.conf references ndiswrapper 
you can do a "modprobe ndiswrapper" to load the kernel module (you may 
need to also "rmmod bcm43xx").  At this point, you can set up the 
wireless NIC through the network configuration app.  There are some 
how-tos available on the 'net, also.

Cheers,
Dave

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