Hi guys

I am facing a really 'strange' issue (atleast I haven't encountered similar problem in several ndiswrapper threads on Internet) and I hope you guys can help me out with this (I guess it would be a nice exercise for you guys..)

I have tried following advice as provided at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/j...oubleshooting/ but it hasn't been of any help

I am using Fedora Core 6 (2.6.20-1.2948 SMP kernel) and I have a Broadcom Wireless 1500 802.11n card (Device 4328) as can be seen from the following output (last line)

[kaushik@localhost:~]$ lspci | tail -5
03:01.1 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
03:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01)
03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)
03:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05)
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Unknown device 4328 (rev 01)

Here is what I did

1) I installed ndiswrapper...It got installed properly as can be seen below

[kaushik@localhost:~]$ ndiswrapper -v
utils version: 1.9
driver version: 1.38
vermagic: 2.6.20-1.2948.fc6 SMP mod_unload 586 4KSTACKS

2) I installed the bcmwl5 INF driver from the windows partition (where the .sys and other files were also located for the device)

[kaushik@localhost:~]$ ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4328) present

As can be seen from the output above, the driver got properly installed and there are no duplicate drivers too

Also, here is what dmesg has to say


[kaushik@localhost:~]$ dmesg | grep ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper version 1.38 loaded (preempt=no,smp=yes)
ndiswrapper: driver bcmwl5 (Broadcom,06/21/2006, 4.80.28.5) loaded
ndiswrapper: using IRQ 16
usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper


3) I used the following script to start my wireless interface wlan0

sudo /sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper
sudo /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 essid linksys key off mode Managed ap any commit
sudo /sbin/dhclient


4) After running the above script, I can see the following output of ifconfig


[kaushik@localhost:~]$ ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:CF:1A:16:B8
inet addr:192.168.1.107 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::216:cfff:fe1a:16b8/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:714 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:335 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:78565 (76.7 KiB) TX bytes:33181 (32.4 KiB)
Interrupt:16 Memory:dfcfc000-dfd00000


I also wanted to verify if its getting connected to the proper network and to a proper Access Point (AP) or not....and it did as can be seen from the following commands


[kaushik@localhost:~]$ iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"linksys"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:0F:66:38:7CE
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Power Managementff
Link Quality:65/100 Signal level:-54 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0


[kaushik@localhost:~]$ iwlist wlan0 scanning
wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:0F:66:38:7CE
ESSID:"linksys"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
Quality:68/100 Signal level:-52 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
Encryption keyff
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
11 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100
Extra:atim=0

5) Further, I wanted to verify if the assigned IP address to my wireless device was working....and it was as can be seen below


[kaushik@localhost:~]$ ping 192.168.1.107
PING 192.168.1.107 (192.168.1.107) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.107: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.068 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.107: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.065 ms

--- 192.168.1.107 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.065/0.066/0.068/0.008 ms


6) Imediately, I did a traceroute to google.com and it succeded..but after a minute or so, I was unable to access the internet.....but I was still able to do the following
--> "ifconfig wlan0" showed me the same output and I was also able to successfully ping the IP address of wlan0

--> "iwlist wlan0 scanning" showed me that wlan0 was still being conected to a valid AP.....

But after doing running the script (in step 4), I am able to access the Internet (My eth0 is always not connected during this entire process) only for a minute or so..after that, I am not able to access the internet (for example, "pig www.google.com" gives an 'unknown host' error)


Can somebody help me out with this ?? I have also tried this stuff with another WEP-enabled wireless network and I have faced this exact same problem (of getting Internet connection only for a few minutes or so).....

IF somebody wants more info, please email me at kaushikgoa@gmail.com..I would really appreciate if you guys can help me out with this......

Kaushik Bhandankar

Also wanted to say that my Dell Wireless 1500 802.11 draft-n/a/g card is supported by Ndiswrapper...as can be seen at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/j...3/id,list_c-f/

Can you try to ping an outside address? this will determine if it is DNS that is the problem or possibly the connection. Ping 192.168.1.1 (or whatever your switch/router is) to verify you are truly still connected to the AP. From what I see it looks like you only verified your WNIC was up by pinging your i.p.

Likewise you can try to ping 192.168.1.107 from another machine on the network. Just need to verify that the connection is lost and not just name resolution. You may even try pinging the I.P. to google to see if it responds without using name translation.

Be sure that there is not a duplicate I.P. or hostname on the network as well, that can often cause things to go haywire.

As I had mentioned in my post, after obtaining the IP address initially, I was able to ping 192.168.1.107 as well as www.google.com as well as the IP address of www.google.com (obtained using DIG command)...

But after a couple of minutes (approx 1-2 minutes), I was not able to ping either www.google.com or the IP address of www.google.com (but was still able to ping 192.168.1.107).....In fact, the connection to the outside world was lost but it still showed me that my wireless interface was connected to a valid access point.

Ok, thats what I was checking for. You failed to mention you could'nt ping an outside I.P. address after entering the fault condition (pinging the I.P. of google.com after google.com did not respond) unless I missed something.

So this proves you cant reach the outside world, since your losing connection to the internet maybe you can try pinging other connections internally (like the AP itself) to be sure its losing connection to the AP completely. Then you know 100% that its the entire AP connection that is lost even though iwconfig tells you otherwise.

Have you run this wifi NIC/setup with another OS other than Fedora to be sure there is no problem with the radio?

Thanks a lot...

Btw, how do you obtain the IP address of the access point (AP) ?? iwconfig tells you only the MAC address of the AP.

Also, I have not tested this on another OS apart from FC5/FC6 but one one friend of mine also has similar problems (He has Dell 1390 Wireless card).....Is it a combination of Dell Wireless Card + Fedora ??

Also, If I get a Intel Wireless card, do you think I would be fine with FC5/Fc6 ?? (ie. Do you know if some particular Intel wireless cards work well with FC5/FC6 ??)

I personally have not tried that combination. NDISwrapper can do some odd things with certain drivers. One thing you can try as well is to get a different windows driver. Often there are older drivers or newer drivers for your wifi NIC in windows. Sometimes NDISwrapper with work with that older or newer driver a lot better.

I dont think its related to NDISwrapper and FC5 or FC6, its most likely related to the windows driver (.inf) and ndiswrapper. Using another card may work because you wont need the NDISwrapper. If it has a normal PRISM, ORINOCO etc. chipset, it should work easy. NDISwrapper is lacking functionality even when it works properly, so its really only best used for getting a laptops built in card to work. So you dont have to lug around an externel card. Before purchasing a new one, or tearing your hair out. I would go check for a previous driver or later driver, just to see if that instantly fixes the problem.