Getting the Realtek RTL8187b WiFi stable under Ubuntu

The latest Ubuntu 8.10 with its Linux 2.6.27 kernel supports the Realtek Rtl8187b wifi chipset (USB) natively. In prior versions of Ubuntu, I had to use ndiswrapper to get the integrated WiFi going on my Medion MD96290 laptop. This is not needed anymore, so I removed the ndiswrapper call from /etc/modules.

Unfortunately, the native rtl8187 module proves very unstable with the Rtl8187B: although the connection appears fine in the menu bar, the wifi interrupts its connection or is suddenly very slow.

After some investigation I found a workaround: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=792092

• gksudo gedit /etc/rc.local
• add at the end, before the exit 0 command:
  iwconfig wlan0 rate 5.5M

Nice to have my wifi up again!