From a.travis at abdn.ac.uk Wed Mar 11 10:21:20 2009 From: a.travis at abdn.ac.uk (Tony Travis) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:21:20 +0000 Subject: [Bio-Linux] Slow WiFi connection on Bio-Linux 5.0 laptop Message-ID: <49B7C8E0.50204@abdn.ac.uk> 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: