I have just installed Ubuntu 11.04 on a new computer which also has Windows XP installed. This computer is connected to the internet via a USB Zonet ZEW2590 802.11N wireless card with the Ralink RT3070 chipset.

Ubuntu sees the wireless card and it connected to my wireless router without any problems. When I look at the connection information it says the wireless card is connected at 24mb/s and one time it said it was connected at 54mb/s.

The problem is that when I go into Firefox and type in a url (such as www.yahoo.com) I see a message at the bottom of the screen saying "Looking Up WWW.YAHOO.COM and then it does nothing for several minutes. Then I get a pop-up box that says "Server Not Found".

Am I forgetting something in the setup?????

Thank you for any help you might be able to provide. I don't have much experience with Linux, so please try to keep any responses as simple as possible.

What do you get from ifconfig and if you try to ping an address?

I just booted the PC and it didn't want to connect to my wireless router. I kept getting a message saying Authentication Required. After several attempts it finally did connect but when I try to ping my router it fails with a message saying "Host Unreachable". I was able to ping the router just fine yesterday and I even got Firefox to display the Yahoo web page once, but that's as far as I've been able to get.....

ifconfig says:

Link encap: ethernet hwaddr c8:3a:35:cl:5a:a2
UP BROADCAST Multicast MTU:1500 Metric:1
Inet 127.0.0.1 Mask 255.0.0.0
RX packets: 23 error=0 dropped=0 overrun=0
TX packets: 79 error=0 dropped=0 overrun=0
collisions:0
RX bytes:4037 (4.0kb)
TX bytes:21032 (21.0 kb)

I rebooted the computer and it connected to my wireless router OK. I was able to ping my router and I was able to ping www.yahoo.com with no errors.

There was also some addition info in ifconfg. It says Inet Addr: 192.168.1.100, Bcast: 192.168.1.255, and Mask: 255.255.255.0

But when I went into Firefox I still could not get to Yahoo or Google. The screen stay blank until it says "Server Not Found"

A quick search seems to indicate that this is a common problem going back to 10.10 anyway.

You may want to look at this;
http://ubuntuforums.org/tags.php?tag=ralink
There may be something there that would help you out.

The Ubuntu Forums was the first place I went. They had a few good ideas but none of them worked.

I will agree that Ubuntu has had wireless connection problems since 10.10, I was just hoping they would have it fixed in 11.04. I was running Ubuntu 9.10 with a Zyxel PCI card that worked OK most of the time, but would drop the connection for no reason from time to time.

Is there a new flavor of Linux out there for download that is easy to use like Ubuntu and also works well with wireless cards? At this point I'm about ready to dump Ubuntu.

As a long time Ubuntu pre-release tester I would like you to look at my sig. You can see what I have done.

That said, I do not use wireless, Ubuntu really does little in the way of the core system (that is left with little recognition to Debian and Gnome).

I can tell you that my Debian testing install (main OS) with the liquorix kernel is running better than Ubuntu and using the 2.6.38 kernel.

How much the wireless problem is kernel based I do not know but keeping on the highest that acts stable will certainly not hurt.

If you have the room set up a dual boot and try Debian. I would use the netinstall disk for Squeeze (stable) as it seems to work best and if it doesn't do it for you upgrade to Wheezy (testing) and if that doesn't do it (or because you want to) get the Liquorix kernel.

You may not like it. You do have to work at it to get eye candy.

EDIT
Do you have the package "firmware-linux-nonfree" installed and the package firmware-ralink? I found them in the Debian testing repo, may be named something different in Ubuntu repos. Search for firmware and ralink in synaptic.

Interestingly I have been using Ubuntu since 8.04 and currently on 10.10 with a look to move to 11.04 shortly and have not had any issues with wireless whatsoever.
That being said, it makes it difficult to diagnose your issue as I have not run into any

You have said you can now ping the router. In Firefox are you also able to go to the routers admin page? (probably 192.168.1.1 based on the information you provided)

Widget, I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to Linux so there's no way I would want to tackle a version that requires a lot of work. I don't know if I have the "firmware-linux-nonfree" installed and the package firmware-ralink. How can I find that out?

Grail, my router requires a hard wire connection in order to log on to it. It will not permit logins from wireless connections.

I found a post on the Ubuntu Forum last night that said to run the command sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off. I tried it and instantly got a super fast connection to the internet via Firefox. HOWEVER, it would only stay connected for 20 seconds and then it would disconnect for 1 to 2 minutes, then it would re-connect at a super fast speed for another 20 seconds. Maybe his command is a step in the right direction, but it's not a total fix.

Yes, I was reading a thread on this very problem in the UF pre-release thread last night. A question was asked of one person with a ralink failure if this was just Ubuntu or was more wide spread. He had no trouble on Fedora or Suse and could get Debian to HAVE the problem if he installed the "firmware-linux-nonfree" package.

Ubuntu must be patching that right into the kernel.

If you want a fairly easy OS to try you might want to look at PCLOS. It is meant to be easy. Choice of desktop environments (not sure which ones but know that KDE and Gnome are there). Based on Mandriva which is a very nice OS.

widget!!!!! I've downloaded PCLinuxOS and it works great from the Live CD. It instantly connected to the internet via my wireless USB adapter. It recognized my Canon Pixma IP4200 printer right away and it seems to work well with my other hardware (video card, sound card, wired NIC, etc.). Tomorrow morning I'll probably remove all traces of Ubuntu from my computer and install this version of Linux. It looks like it will do everything I was expecting from Ubuntu.

I'm typing/sending this message from PCLinuxOS. My wireless connection speed is excellent/very fast and I've been connected to the net for more than 3 hours without even a single disconnect. In Ubuntu 11.04 I was being disconnected every 20 seconds.

Thank you for the tip.

Ken

By the way, I downloaded the KDE version. I've been using Ubuntu Gnome for a few years but used KDE when I was running Mandrake and SUSE. I've never seen any major differences between the two.

I am very glad it works for you. Nice thing about Linux is the amount of choice available.

I see you are in S.E. Montana. I was stationed at Glasgow AFB ( N.E. Montana) from Jan. 1964 to Sept. 1967.

Ah, someone older than this grumpy geezer, great, I like that. I do remember LBJ very well though.

I am in the Broadus area Glasgow is hike north but worth it. The last ranch I worked on was south west of here up on the divide between the Powder and Tongue rivers. Rough beautiful country.

I never did get down to your part of Montana. Fort Peck reservoir was about as far south as I got. Glasgow was OK but I hated the winters. I've always refused to live anywhere that gets snow after living near Glasgow. I'm 15 miles from Sacramento, CA and I've only seen snow here 3 times since 1953. JFK was my favorite president but I do remember Ike.

I removed Ubuntu from my PC this afternoon and installed PCLinuxOS. It works GREAT!! Thank you for the tip. I was about ready to dump Linux and go back to Windows. Now I have a version of Linux that does everything I want.