I got a new pci wireless card for my ubuntu desktop (D-Link WDA-1320). Ubuntu support sites identified it as a "works out of the box" card. And as soon as I remembered that my roommate/network admin uses hardware address authentication, I was indeed able to get an IP address. A little playing around with settings and I could even ssh to an old account from my undergrad days, though it is ass slow. But no other network connections seem to be working. I can ping just about anywhere with no major problems (except an occasional message about a wrong data byte). But firefox keeps timing out, and downloading new drivers doesn’t seem to work at all. It’s about 2 out of 4 bars (and hovers around 50% on what I’m guessing is signal strength) on the wireless control panel.
Looking at the card itself, the activity and power lights are blinking in sync. That almost helps it make sense. I’d be willing to throw good money after bad to get a wireless card that gave me none of these headaches.
when you say ubuntu desktop, do you really mean desktop, or do you just mean that your laptop boots directly into ubuntu?
I don’t bother doing wireless on my desktops. If I can’t run cat5, I just turn a wireless router into a bridge.
Having been in his place, I can say that running Cat5 (or 5e or 6) may not be practical for him.
It seems like a wireless adapter for a desktop would be cheaper than a wireless router. I have a desktop with a non-functioning Ethernet port which when in use (it’s been dormant for a year) works just fine on wireless. Granted, it’s Windows and Linux is a whole different beast.
Sure, but we’re talking about what, $10 for an adapter, and $30 for a linux-capable router? It’s more of a wash if you need to hook up multiple desktops.
And yeah, I’m not proposing running cable. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t proposing something that simply wasn’t going to work for a laptop.
It’s possible this is a problem with Network Manager. Maybe try installing WICD and see if the problem improves…