[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
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: fix_bcm.sh
Type: application/x-sh
Size: 1407 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.bioinformatics.org/pipermail/bio-linux-list/attachments/20090311/95fee7ba/attachment.sh>
More information about the Bio-linux-list
mailing list