2008/12/19

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!
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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 25, 2009 at 2:24 AM

    THANKS! I was looking for a solution to this problem for months!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 19, 2009 at 12:27 AM

    Doesn't this downgrade you 802.11B speeds on a 802.11G wireless adapter?

    ReplyDelete
  3. MauricioMay 17, 2009 at 8:30 PM

    Worked perfectly. I am running Xubuntu 9.04 with an Encore ENUWI-G2 USB.

    ReplyDelete
  4. MichaëlMay 28, 2009 at 9:40 PM

    I'm still not satisfied with this solution. As commented earlier, this really slows down your connection. And even with this hack, the wifi connection sometimes gets stuck

    ReplyDelete
  5. JawaadJanuary 28, 2010 at 2:15 PM

    Ubuntu 9/10 Karmic Koala doesn't work! :(

    ReplyDelete