I finally got rid of that unreliable NetGear Wireless card and replaced it with a TP-Link card which uses the Atheros chipset. It was only $27 at UMart.

I’ve only had it for a couple of days but in that time I have transferred more than 10GB through it and it has been 100% reliable.

This one was not too difficult to get going on Ubuntu since it is well supported by the MadWifi drivers which are built in to Ubuntu.


However there is a little catch if you want to use WEP. You need to add the iwpriv command to activate your WEP. Here’s my /etc/network/interfaces file with the tricky bit highlighted in bold:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# TP-Link Wi-fi card
auto ath0
iface ath0 inet dhcp
        wireless-mode Managed
        wireless-essid adamnet
        pre-up iwpriv ath0 authmode 2
        wireless-key 1234567890

NOTES: If you are copying this, make sure to change the essid and key to match those of your own network. And if you think this is my real WEP key, you are in for some disappointment.