Which USB Wifi ?

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miket

Which USB Wifi ?

Post by miket »

Hi All,

Can one of the official Mint people please advise which USB Wifi keys are officially support by Mint ?

I'm tired of the unreliable support for my Ralink built-in USB wifi device and want to get an external USB device, but I need to know which
one is going to work perfectly without any problems at all ??


EDIT: Probably better to put it this way, Which USB Wifi key will work right out the box without the need for messing with drivers etc ??
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Husse

Re: Which USB Wifi ?

Post by Husse »

Well, we don't officially support anything except Mint :)
There is a list in the wiki
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... Wifi_cards
This is of course private opinions, but I hope they tell something
miket

Re: Which USB Wifi ?

Post by miket »

Hi Husse !
Husse wrote:Well, we don't officially support anything except Mint :)
There is a list in the wiki
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... Wifi_cards
This is of course private opinions, but I hope they tell something
Wifi is a weak area in Linux ... which is a shame .... however ....

I've been doing some digging around and have nailed down a couple of problems with the stock drivers that
come with Mint for the RaLink Technology series of USB wifi devices.

Firstly some information from my system:

lsusb :

Bus 007 Device 002: ID 148f:2573 Ralink Technology, Corp.

lsmod :

Module Size Used by
af_packet 24840 12
binfmt_misc 12936 1
i915 25856 2
drm 83348 3 i915
rfcomm 42136 2
l2cap 26240 11 rfcomm
bluetooth 57060 4 rfcomm,l2cap
vboxdrv 61104 0
ppdev 10244 0
acpi_cpufreq 10568 1
cpufreq_stats 7232 0
cpufreq_userspace 5280 0
cpufreq_conservative 8072 0
cpufreq_powersave 2688 0
cpufreq_ondemand 9612 1
freq_table 5792 3 acpi_cpufreq,cpufreq_stats,cpufreq_ondemand
ac 6148 0
button 8976 0
battery 11012 0
video 18060 0
dock 10656 0
sbs 19592 0
container 5504 0
parport_pc 37412 0
lp 12580 0
parport 37448 3 ppdev,parport_pc,lp
rt2500usb 22016 0
arc4 2944 2
ecb 4608 2
blkcipher 7556 1 ecb
rc80211_simple 6912 1
joydev 11328 0
snd_hda_intel 263712 1
snd_pcm_oss 44672 0
snd_mixer_oss 17664 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 80388 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_dummy 4740 0
snd_seq_oss 33152 0
snd_seq_midi 9600 0
rt73usb 25344 0
rt2x00usb 12032 2 rt2500usb,rt73usb
rt2x00lib 19584 3 rt2500usb,rt73usb,rt2x00usb
snd_rawmidi 25728 1 snd_seq_midi
rfkill 8208 1 rt2x00lib
snd_seq_midi_event 8448 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
mac80211 171016 3 rc80211_simple,rt2x00usb,rt2x00lib
cfg80211 7304 1 mac80211
snd_seq 53232 6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_
event
input_polldev 5896 1 rt2x00lib
crc_itu_t 3072 1 rt2x00lib
snd_timer 24324 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device 9228 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,s
nd_seq
snd 54660 11 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd
_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
soundcore 8800 1 snd
serio_raw 8068 0
psmouse 39952 0
snd_page_alloc 11400 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
intel_agp 25620 1
agpgart 35016 3 drm,intel_agp
shpchp 34580 0
pci_hotplug 32704 1 shpchp
evdev 11136 6
ext3 133896 1
jbd 60456 1 ext3
mbcache 9732 1 ext3
sg 36764 0
sd_mod 30336 3
sr_mod 17828 0
cdrom 37536 1 sr_mod
ata_piix 17540 2
r8169 32260 0
ata_generic 8452 0
libata 125168 2 ata_piix,ata_generic
scsi_mod 147084 4 sg,sd_mod,sr_mod,libata
ehci_hcd 36492 0
uhci_hcd 26640 0
usbcore 138632 6 rt2500usb,rt73usb,rt2x00usb,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
thermal 14344 0
processor 32072 2 acpi_cpufreq,thermal
fan 5764 0
capability 5896 0
commoncap 8320 1 capability
fuse 47124 3

Now onto the problems.

Firstly, when the system is first booted and the wifi device starts hopping through the channels looking for AccessPoints
it will often hang when it gets to channel 2, frequency 2.417Ghz. The *only* way to recover from this hang is to manually step the device
through ALL the supported channels using iwconfig, even a cold reboot of the machine will not re-enable the device. Once the device has been manually stepped through all the supported channels it will function correctly until next startup when it will hang on channel 2 again.

This problem only happens in Mint/Ubuntu, it is fine under Windows with the correct driver installed.

2nd problem, this is quite interesting!
(Being a radio HAM and having the necessary equipment to hand I can look at this from a radio and PC point of view!)

If you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels you will see that there is a difference in channel allocations between the USA and Europe, notably that the USA support up to and including Channel 11 whereas in Europe we support up to and including Channel 13.

I had my AccessPoint setup to use channel 13 as this kept my wifi service well away from any of my neighbour's wifi services thus reducing crosstalk on the 5Mhz spaced frequency allocation, which resulted in better performance especially during times of "high frequency ducting" which occurs during the evening when temperatures drop suddenly creating a conductive tunnel over which wifi signals are transported over greater distances than normally would be achieved.

Under Windows I am able to configure the wifi device to use the EU set of channels thus this setup worked perfectly, however there is no such option enabled in the Mint/Ubuntu drivers thus they default to the US standard which only supports up to and including channel 11, thus my AccessPoint was never found.

If I boot into windows, setup the device to EU standards, perform a *Soft-Reboot* into Mint, it will continue to use the EU standards configured on the wifi device by windows, however if I perform a *Cold-Reboot* the device is set back to US standards when I boot into Mint/Ubuntu which excludes all channels above channel 11. This is a major oversight by the device driver developers and is something that will need to be addressed, especially in highly populated "Wifi" areas where in Europe people use the higher channels often to escape the interference caused on the lower channels by too many wifi AccessPoints all using the same channels.

I know this has been a long post, however I hope it is of use to you/the development team.

I am happy to help out testing any new versions of the drivers if required.

Mike.
Husse

Re: Which USB Wifi ?

Post by Husse »

Well Ralink has it's share of problems...
You touch on a problem I noticed when I experimented with the old craptop I have - no method to set channel and I had to change channel to get my wifes (Windows) laptop connected - she had way too many drop outs
It's too late for Elyssa but I think this is really something to consider
I will put this in the suggestions section
I have no solution for you, but I can comment to this soft/hard reboot situation
This is due to the strange way firmware is handled in some wifi devices - Broadcom being the most notorious
It is loaded onto the device like a driver and some settings are unavailable to Linux due to the fact that manufacturers don't make the complete specs available to the Linux community (but to Microsoft)
So Win can do changes that Linux can't :evil:
miket

Re: Which USB Wifi ?

Post by miket »

Hi Husse !
Husse wrote:Well Ralink has it's share of problems...
You touch on a problem I noticed when I experimented with the old craptop I have - no method to set channel and I had to change channel to get my wifes (Windows) laptop connected - she had way too many drop outs
It's too late for Elyssa but I think this is really something to consider
I will put this in the suggestions section
I have no solution for you, but I can comment to this soft/hard reboot situation
This is due to the strange way firmware is handled in some wifi devices - Broadcom being the most notorious
It is loaded onto the device like a driver and some settings are unavailable to Linux due to the fact that manufacturers don't make the complete specs available to the Linux community (but to Microsoft)
So Win can do changes that Linux can't :evil:
I have knocked up a little script that gets run at boot-time that manually steps the wifi device through all 11 channels thus getting round the lock-up on channel 2.
Since I no longer have windows installed in a "Dual-Boot" configuration I am no longer able to switch the wifi device to a channel above 11 so I have, for the time being,
moved my AccessPoint to a lower channel ... thus allowing the Mint laptop to function once more.

I think it really is time for the governments of the world to start seriously attacking this "Monopoly" situation that M$ seem to have over the hardware manufacturers,
they have grown far too powerful over the years and now threaten our freedom!

Mike.
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