[the] Code Girl (aka UnrulyGrrl)

Recently my laptop hard drive died and I had to re-install Ubuntu. Instead of installing Breezy and updating to Dapper, I installed Dapper. Guess what? NO MORE WIRELESS PROBLEMS AT ALL. It seems the problem with the ipw2200 that I had previously only existed in my “upgraded” setup. I don’t know exactly what this means or how to get around it, for those of you who still have Breezy but want to upgrade to Dapper, I don’t want to recommend you blowing away Ubuntu and re-installing. Just an FYI and followup to a previous post.

I noticed that my wireless would randomly stop working ever since I upgraded Ubuntu Linux from Breezy to Dapper. syslog showed a lot of:

ipw2200: Firmware error detected.  Restarting.

I tried installing the latest firmware…and STILL got these errors constantly.

Dapper uses v1.1.1 of the ipw2200 driver, and Breezy used the 1.0.6 version. The kernel was also upgrade from 2.6.12 to 2.6.15. I’m not the only one complaining about this issue, as I found several posts at the Ubuntu forums. Loading the older kernel from the GRUB bootup menu didn’t help (i couldn’t even get the ipw2200 driver to load at all).

I didn’t want to deal with compiling a new or old ipw2200 driver from source merely in the hopes that it would work. I have things TO DO. last weekend, after I had unloaded and reload ipw2200 module at least 5 times within the space of 2 or 3 hours, I gave the #*%& up on it, and ran a long piece of Cat5e from my office to the family room. I’ve been zipping along at 100MBps since then and have not had a single problem since.

You may want to think twice about upgrading from Breezy to Dapper if you have an Intel wireless chipset that uses the ipw2200 driver/module.

Well that was WAY easier than I thought. Coming to you live from my laptop, over 802.11g with WPA-PSK for the encryption scheme. Now I get a new encryption key every time, auto-negotiated with the AP. It’s all seamless to me.

To get it working:

1. Emerged ‘wpa_supplicant‘ (already in Gentoo portage tree)
2. Added a passphrase to my AP
3. Configured

   /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

   like so:

   network={
        ssid=<my ESSID goes here>
        psk=<my passphrase goes here>
        priority=1
   }
   

   All other settings were left at the default

   To make sure the system would use it when I insert my DWLG650, I created

   /etc/init.d/net.ath0

   with the following contents:

   #!/bin/bash
   wpa_supplicant -B -K -t -Dmadwifi -iath0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
   sleep 3
   dhcpcd -d ath0
   

I give the system 3-4 seconds to associate with the AP and negotiate the encryption keys before I attempt to request an IP address (hence the ’sleep 3′).

This isn’t the best solution, WPA with a RADIUS server would be, but it will do for now. At least I feel a little better about keeping out my nosy neighbors. At last count, I could see 8 other access points from my laptop. So far I’m the only one who is using a form of WPA.

Edit:

Ok, scratch this. I just noticed that my speed is stuck at 5MBps. I want my 54MBps back. :-/ I don’t feel like troubleshooting. Going back to WEP. Hopefully the problem is just the version of the madwifi I’m using

After having my laptop for a week or two, I decided I really should be taking advantage of the 54Mbps potential of the internal wireless. I got a Linksys WRT54G off eBay because I also thought I could use it for this.

I had one heck of a time getting it to work with my integrated wireless in my laptop. Primarily I had issues with the signal level dropping continually. My laptop just refused to associate with the AP most of the time. I made the mistake of choosing the Linksys based solely on its use of Linux. Once I started reading reviews of it, they were almost all negative, mentioning mostly the terrible signal level. Further research turned up the DLink DI624

I’ve had only good luck with DLink products, so I felt good about buying that one. Picked up one from the local Best Buy. It was ridiculously easy to configure, and it was featureful enough that I used it to totally replace my firewall. 5 hours i messed with trying to get the damn Intel 2200 to connect to it, but it just wouldnt. A few days later I popped into Best Buy again and got the DLink DWLG650, so I could see if the problem with the laptop really was the internal wireless.

I chose the DWLG650 because it uses the Atheros chipset, which I found to be one of the best supported 802.11g chipsets under linux. Oddly enough the driver is called “madwifi”. I ‘emerged’ it with Gentoo, and I haven’t looked back since. I loaded the driver, it associated with my AP, got an IP via DHCP and off I went. The speed seems to fluctuate from 54 to 24 to 36 and back. Mostly it stays at 54 though. I really, really, really wish Dell had chosen an Atheros chipset. Since they didn’t, I have given up my 1 and only pcmcia slot. Oh well, I have wireless that works, and that is all
that really matters.