I had this working out of the box from Dell using the restricted driver provided by Dell with 8.04. It worked again when I upgraded to 9.04. It seems to have just stopped working.

Here are my results for troubleshooting

sudo lshw

*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: BCM4312 802.11b/g
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:0c:00.0
logical name: eth1
version: 01
serial: 00:22:5f:af:28:da
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl0 driverversion=5.10.91.9 latency=0 module=wl multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg

sudo iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"" Nickname:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Powerff
Retry min limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Power Managementmode:All packets received
Link Quality=5/5 Signal level=0 dBm Noise level=0 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

pan0 no wireless extensions.

ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:23:ae:40:2b:b2
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:18

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:22:5f:af:28:da
inet6 addr: fe80::222:5fff:feaf:28da/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:17 Base address:0xc000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:20 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:20 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1424 (1.4 KB) TX bytes:1424 (1.4 KB)

pan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 92:5d:74:f3:c3:e5
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

lspci -v | grep subordinate
Bus: primary=00, secondary=0b, subordinate=0b, sec-latency=0
Bus: primary=00, secondary=0c, subordinate=0c, sec-latency=0
Bus: primary=00, secondary=09, subordinate=09, sec-latency=0
Bus: primary=00, secondary=0d, subordinate=0e, sec-latency=0
Bus: primary=00, secondary=03, subordinate=03, sec-latency=32

sudo ifconfig eth1 down
sudo ifconfig eth1 10.0.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.0
sudo route add default gw 10.0.0.1
sudo iwconfig eth1 essid "network_name"
sudo iwconfig eth1 mode managed key xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
sudo ifconfig eth1 up
ping 10.0.0.9 -c3

ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:23:ae:40:2b:b2
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:18

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:22:5f:af:28:da
inet addr:10.0.0.2 Bcast:10.0.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::222:5fff:feaf:28da/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:17 Base address:0xc000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:27 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:27 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:2040 (2.0 KB) TX bytes:2040 (2.0 KB)

pan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 92:5d:74:f3:c3:e5
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

sudo iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"" Nickname:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Powerff
Retry min limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Power Managementmode:All packets received
Link Quality=5/5 Signal level=0 dBm Noise level=0 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

pan0 no wireless extensions.


PING 10.0.0.9 (10.0.0.9) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 10.0.0.2 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
From 10.0.0.2 icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
From 10.0.0.2 icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable

Check dmesg for errors after attempting a wireless connection.

I'm not familiar with the Dell driver you're talking about, but where I come from (Arch Linux), 4312 users compile the Broadcom-supplied driver - source here, Arch build info here. There are some patches there that you may need, depending on your kernel version.

Thanks to the poster and all who read my post. I think that this must be a freak hardware failure. I finally gave up and bought an edimax mimo XR USB wireless nic. I plugged in the nic and booted the machine. The machine detected the nic automatically and connected to my secure wireless connection without configuration.