Wireless really slow with Dynamic WEP

[tijnema]

Hi all,

First of all, I'm using nm-applet because kde network manager does not support Dynamic WEP networks. (Maybe through wpa-supplicant, but never got it to work).

Second, I had this working fine on my old laptop (Atheros chip), but on my new laptop I'm having trouble (Broadcom wireless N chip).

I can connect, and the connection is successful, but it is not working or really really slow, like 1 kb/s.
I really don't understand why it worked perfectly on my old laptop, and not on my new one, ideas anyone?

- I have dual boot with Windows 7, and the wireless there is fine (using SecureW2 to support Dynamic WEP)..
- When I'm at home (unencrypted wireless), wireless is fine too.

[sithlord48]

Re: Wireless really slow with Dynamic WEP

just a general rule of thumb,DON'T use WEP. Instead use WPA or WPA2. its much better security.

also it could be your broadcom chip driver. have you installed anydriver using the "additional driver" program iirc you requre a FWcutter and module to use that card

[tijnema]

Re: Wireless really slow with Dynamic WEP

I know WPA/WPA2 is much better than WEP, but I have no control over this network (It's my university network).

I remember that it was quite tricky to get my broadcom chip working, and I don't exactly remember how I've done it. When I start the "additional drivers" program, it says "Broadcom STA wireless driver"

"These package contains Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driverfor use with Broadcom's BCM4311-, BCM4312-, BCM4321-, andBCM4322-based hardware."

and lspci says:
06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43225 802.11b/g/n (rev 01)

I saw something about fwcutter, but I don't understand what it is. I'm absolutely sure I haven't got fwcutter installed and/or used.

[Rob_H]

Re: Wireless really slow with Dynamic WEP

I saw something about fwcutter, but I don't understand what it is. I'm absolutely sure I haven't got fwcutter installed and/or used.

It's a utility that extracts firmware code from Broadcom Windows driver files that can then be used with the B43 driver, which is an alternative to the STA driver. Although the Ubuntu repos have packages to download some firmware directly, so you might not need to obtain the Windows driver yourself.

If you open up Applications > System > Additional Drivers, you may see a listing for "Broadcom B43 Wireless Driver". That's the fwcutter-based one. If you don't see it there, it might be because your hardware doesn't support it, but you can install the packages anyway by searching for "b43" in KPackageKit, which will bring up the fwcutter utility as well as the firmware download packages for various chipsets. Note that you should remove the STA driver before using B43. If you install via the Additional Drivers program, this happens automatically.

One important thing is to completely shutdown and cold boot your machine after swapping these drivers. Don't just reboot. That was critical in my case, although I was switching in the other direction (going from B43 to STA).

[tijnema]

Re: Wireless really slow with Dynamic WEP

Thanks for the explanation, but I've got bad luck..


I tried the Additional Drivers, but the "Broadcom B43 Wireless Driver" didn't show up, so I just removed the STA driver and a cold boot afterwards. Then I installed fwcutter + firmware-b43-installer, which failed from KPackageKit, but I tried again with apt-get and it installed a few firmwares. Again, I did a cold boot, but afterwards, no wireless driver at all (device is not recognized at all in dmesg/ifconfig).

So I looked up the driver at internet and I found this:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Dr...wn_PCI_devices

my pci id is 14e4:4357, which is unsupported apparently, so as it says under alternative, I tried the brcm80211, using the instructions on this page:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Dr...rcmsmac_driver

Again, a cold boot, but still no wireless at all (again not recognized in dmesg/ifconfig)

So I'm back at the STA driver for now, any other suggestions?

[vinnywright]

Re: Wireless really slow with Dynamic WEP

you could try obtaining the windows-XP drivers for the card/chipset and using them with ndiswrapper.

if you decide to try this post back after you have the drivers and I will tell you what to do......it's a bit of CLI and must be done in a certain sequence.......so wate for the instructions


VINNY

[tijnema]

Re: Wireless really slow with Dynamic WEP

Ofcourse I want to try this, I'm familiar with CLI so that's not a big deal, just got to know what to do..

I have windows 7 in multi-boot, can I just grab some .dll from my system32 dir and try that?

ps. I'm running win7 x64 and Kubuntu x64

[vinnywright]

Re: Wireless really slow with Dynamic WEP

I would find the XP drivers as I know thay work best with ndiswrapper.

you nead to get the 2 packages (with you favoret package manager) ndiswrapper-utils and common

then put the driver files in to a folder someware and open a terminall thare or navigat to the dir with the files .

then from in the dir do

sudo ndiswrapper -i filename.inf

whare filename is the name of the .inf file in the driver set

then

sudo ndiswrapper -m

then

sudo ndiswrapper -ma

then

sudo ndiswrapper -mi

and finaley

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

and you should be good......or may nead a restart.

VINNY

[tijnema]

Re: Wireless really slow with Dynamic WEP

Do I need the windows XP x64 drivers then?

Edit: I can't seem to find XP x64 drivers for my BXM 43225. I have found Windows 7 x64 drivers but they didn't work because ndiswrapper failed to boot with lots of errors like some user reported here:
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/wir...er-bcmwl6.html

In that thread there's a link to XP drivers, but they are not for my chipset (I checked the PCI ID's inside the inf file)