Realtek Semiconductor 8187B integrated USB Wireless interface controller
Reviews
Views
Date of last review
2
3084
12-23-2008
Recommended By
Average Price
Average Rating
100% of reviewers
None indicated
8.0
Description:
This is a common internal wireless chipset which is unusual in that it is connected via USB. It is common in many Toshiba and other medium priced laptops. It is known to work with Ndiswrapper and another driver available on the net.
The chipset will be natively supported in the 2.6.27 kernel and I can confirm that the 2.6.27-rc6 kernel does in fact provide a working driver for this chipset.
The Realtek RTL8187B is a low-profile highly integrated cost-effective Wireless LAN USB 2.0 network interface controller that integrates a USB 2.0 PHY, SIE (Serial Interface Engine), 8051 MCU, a Wireless LAN MAC, and a Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum/OFDM baseband processor onto one chip. It provides USB high speed (480Mbps), and full speed (12Mbps), and supports 9 endpoints for transfer pipes. To reduce protocol overhead, the RTL8187B supports Short InterFrame Space (SIFS) burst mode to send packets back-to-back. A protection mechanism prevents collisions among 802.11b nodes. The RTL8187B fully complies with IEEE 802.11a/b/g, WMM, 802.11e, and CCX specifications.
(much more available on the Realtek web site linked above)
Realtek has previously provided an out-of-kernel driver for the RTL8185L and RTL8187L chipsets, but not the RTL8187B.
When I first purchased this laptop in March 2008, I had studied the components and believed them to be completely Linux friendly. The RTL8187B internal USB chipset included with this laptop confused me because there were native Linux kernel drivers already available for the RTL8187, so I assumed this would be compatible. But as it turned out, this RTL8187B is not compatible with the RTL8187 driver. The RTL8187 will recognize the chipset, but will not connect with it. And, since it is an internal USB connection, lspci would not find it. So, I set out to get it going with Ndiswrapper. This took some investigation, but the Ndiswrapper solution is here:
It was very easy to get it going in Slackware 12.1 with Ndiswrapper using this solution. And, like most things in Slackware, it has been very reliable and has never failed. I simply put the config commands (iwconfig commands) in /etc/rc.local and it is available at boot. I have used the same method to get this chipset working with Ndiswrapper in three different distros (Slackware, Ubuntu and Puppy).
I had read somewhere on the net (don't remember where) that native Linux support would be included with the release of kernel 2.6.27. As of this date (September 2008), 2.6.27 is still in rc status. I downloaded and compiled this kernel and can confirm that this kernel does in fact have native support for this chipset and it worked right away with this driver. I installed this kernel just as a test to see if the new driver did in fact work, but will not use it as my default kernel until it is released officially and it should be noted that dmesg notifies that this driver is still experimental and the user does so at their own risk. I have had no issues with it, and it provides a stronger signal than I got with ndiswrapper.
Slackware has always been the most stable and reliable distro for me, and now, with ALL of my hardware natively supported, I couldn't be more pleased.
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 8
Kernel (uname -r):
2.6.27-9-generic
Distribution:
Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
Since I upgraded to the Intrepid Ibex with the newer kernel, the thing just worked from the Live CD on. It did not work with AMD64 bit Ubuntu 8.10 though. It never worked before with earlier kernel images either. I spent dozens of hours working the problem in forums, and IRC channels.
It works now with only minor problems. When surfing with heavy traffic, lots of requests from my machine, it fails. I just disable wireless, (wlan0down)wait about a minute, then enable wireless, (wlan0up) and it finds the same network I was connected to at the time it failed.
WPA, WEP, they all have worked so far.
Great job you wifi driver builders, you unsung heroes!
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.
