RL2500 Wireless NIC troubles

[leftbas]

Hey, everyone. Just got Hardy Heron installed on my AMD box. As usual, I used the Intel install and not the AMD image cuz stuff just seems to work better. Everything, that is, except my RL2500-based wireless NIC. It's a PCI card, and I want to keep it because I don't want to drill any holes in the walls to stick and Ethernet cable through. All of the reading I've done suggests that the RL-2500 cards are well supported at speeds of up to 54Mb/sec, which is the speed of my wireless router. But the damned thing only connects at 1Mb/sec! I can't seem to find any configuration information, and I had it in the box when I installed Hardy, so it should have picked up the correct driver.

By way of comparison, the notebook I'm entering this on is an older HP Compaq with an Intel-based wireless NIC, and it has no trouble connecting at 54Mb/sec.

Help?

[Nomad]

Re: RL2500 Wireless NIC troubles

I seem to have a similar problem, with internet only working at about 30 kB/s on a 1Mb/s (128 kB/s) connection. It looks like a problem with wireless, as wired connections work correctly.

Ubuntuforums thread

[leftbas]

Re: RL2500 Wireless NIC troubles

Same here! I think I neglected to mention the wired connection is fine, quite fast. I'm afraid that if there's no fix that I'll have to drill a hole in the wall after all. I wonder if all the other problems are all Hardy-related, or just related to the RL2500-based wireless NICs. I should also mention that the HP Compaq notebook I'm using (the one with the Intel wireless NIC) is running Gutsy (7.10).

And running the updates had so far had no effect. I just had a new update notice appear yesterday, after I'd run every available update a few days earlier. Kinda disconcerting. I realize 8.04 is still technically a beta, but this is not the kind of thing I'd expect to see at this stage of the release process. I hope it gets fixed quickly.

Thanks for the reply and the link. Nice to know I haven't screwed anything up without realizing it. Still loving Ubuntu with a K

[Nomad]

Re: RL2500 Wireless NIC troubles

You can fix this by using an older kernel. I booted into 2.6.22 and it's fine here.

[latex]

Re: RL2500 Wireless NIC troubles

I had the same same problem. Had to keep network-manager and network-manager-kde back to test cd 1 to use wireless.

[leftbas]

Re: RL2500 Wireless NIC troubles

Thanks for the replies, guys. I ended up drilling a hole in the wall after all, and moving the modem and router into the office so I could use an Ethernet cable. Works beautifully. But I'm not so sure either of your ideas are necessary. I upgraded my notebook (an HP Pavilion with an Intel wireless NIC) to the same 8.04 beta that my desktop uses, and after the reboot connected to the wireless router just as fast as before. So the current kernel and network manager seem to work just fine.

I'm still not sure why it doesn't work, but at least I have a fast connection again. I guess it's just the RL2500 chipset, or maybe just the Netgear card, but that seems unlikely since it's such a widely used brand of network peripherals. And since I never used the wireless NIC with any prior releases, I guess I'll never know if it ever did work and then crapped out.

But thanks again for the responses! Cheers!

[Nomad]

Re: RL2500 Wireless NIC troubles

The solution is actually blatantly simple.

Running

sudo iwconfig <your interface> rate 54M

should fix the whole thing.