[Bio-Linux] Slow WiFi connection on Bio-Linux 5.0 laptop

Tony Travis a.travis at abdn.ac.uk
Wed Mar 11 10:21:20 EDT 2009


Hello, Bio-Linux list.

I've installed Bio-Linux 5.0 on my Asus A6000 laptop, which has a 
Broadcom BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller.

The BCM4318 is detected after installation, and a proprietary driver is 
offered, using 'fwcutter' to extract the firmware for the controller 
from a generic Windows driver. Unfortunately, the b43 kernel module does 
not work properly under the 2.6.24-23-generic kernel of Ubuntu Hardy 
(8.04 LTS) on which Bio-Linux 5.0 is based. The best WiFI connections 
that can be achieved using this driver are 1-2 Mb/s. The same laptop 
gets up to 54Mb/s under Micro$oft Windows or Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10).

Apparently, this is a well known bug in Hardy, and it is recommended to 
use the 'NDIS' driver instead. I installed "ndiswrapper" under Bio-Linux 
5.0, based on minor modifications to a script posted on the web at:

> http://nxadm.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/broadcom-wifi-bcm4312-speedup-on-ubuntu-804-on-a-hp-nc6320-laptop/

My modified script is attached. My changes only concern how the script 
generates the file contents, but I've changed the script to overwrite 
(rather than append to) /etc/rc.local because all it contains is an 
"exit 0" that prevents what the script appends from being executed!

This script got me connected at 24Mb/s on a 20% full strength signal, 
which was running at 1Mb/s using the proprietary b43 driver module.

Bye,

	Tony.
-- 
Dr. A.J.Travis, University of Aberdeen, Rowett Institute of Nutrition
and Health, Greenburn Road, Bucksburn, Aberdeen AB21 9SB, Scotland, UK
tel +44(0)1224 712751, fax +44(0)1224 716687, http://www.rowett.ac.uk
mailto:a.travis at abdn.ac.uk, http://bioinformatics.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt
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