Dependable Wireless Connection Now Weird (Solved)

[rbrown3rd]

I am running an old Dell Inspiron 8500, Hardy 8.04, and KDE 3.5 Quite some time ago I went through the travails of getting my Broadcom card working by using Ndiswrapper and following various and sundry threads on this forum and the Ubuntu guides. It has worked pretty much reliably until yesterday when I accidentally deleted my KDE desktop and had to rebuild it. Since then I am getting the commonly reported problem with the Truemobile v2 where I can detect stations but cannot connect to them. Having exhausted my research abilities using the forum and the web I am wondering if anyone has some wisdom they could impart to help me get my connectivity back. I am connecting to a station right now with my Iphone and can see it with the laptop but it does not connect. I know this is a well beaten horse but I am hoping there is a solution.

My card is:

Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

Yes, that one. The frustration is it worked fine until yesterday.

[rbrown3rd]

Re: Dependable Wireless Connection Now Weird

This seems to have worked to resolve my problem:

3.3.1. Notes on wep

*

ubuntu wep faq
* If you have a 10 digit wep key try entering it in this format xxxx-xxxx-xx (include dashes)
* Use an open setting instead of shared when using wep

See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...0no%20internet

I think it was entering the WEP key with dashes that did it.

[rbrown3rd]

Re: Dependable Wireless Connection Now Weird (Solved)

Well, it was working last night and this morning it is not. I did manage to get a brief connection but lost it. I will continue testing and when I travel back home will work with my home WLAN to see what happens there. Wireless networking, at least with my machine, was a real problem to setup a few months ago. It then worked dependably until yesterday. Now, nothing has changed on my machine except that I had to rebuild my KDE desktop. I am guessing that in the process some file related to wireless networking got updated. That, is from someone who has no idea what they are talking about. But, logic tells me that is the case.

Of course, it could also be router problems. I am going to ask my son-in-law to reboot his router when he gets home from work this morning. Other than those points I don't know why my laptop would go from connecting reliably to not connecting at all.

[rbrown3rd]

Re: Dependable Wireless Connection Now Weird (perhaps not yet Solved)

This was the final step that really seems to have made my connection solid again:

Those of you using WEP may also want to note:
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrSpirograph
However, you may want to mention that there seems to be a bit of a bug with the way NetworkManager handles WEP + DHCP.

(See here https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/139812)

The bug made me (and I suspect may make others) think that their card isn't working, when in fact it is.

To work around and get WEP going, you can do the following:
Code:

sudoedit /etc/network/interfaces
add the line
iface wlan0 inet dhcp

then, to get the network up, do the following (replacing $ESSID and $KEY with the proper ESSID and key):
Code:

sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid $ESSID key $KEY sudo ifup wlan0