Hi Carl, I have the similar problem. I was using edimax based on rtl891cu chipset. The wifi is on and off from time to time. Also it's very slow. I am going to try your solution. May I ask which driver do you use for NetGear WNA adaptor? What speed can you get by using this adaptor?
Thanks, Mengjun On Thursday, May 2, 2013 11:12:25 AM UTC-4, Carl Johnson wrote: > > I have been trying for over a month to get reliable WiFi working on the > original BeagleBone and now on the new BeagleBone Black. I kept seeing > weird behavior, such as randomly dropped or stuttering connections, and > different symptoms depending upon whether the WiFi dongle was plugged > directly into Bone, into an extension cable, or into a powered hub. > There's a lot of online frustration about this, some of which I contributed > to. It was really unclear to me if the problem was hardware or software > related, or some combination of the two. > > Long story short, I believe that most of my problems stemmed from > attempting to use dongles based upon the rtl8192cu chipset (I tried several > different ones). These are very common, widely available, and appear at > first glance to have the best software support on the Bone, at least in the > standard Angstrom distribution. Most of the online tutorials about how to > get WiFi running on the Bone are using these dongles. I don't know if or > why the people who wrote these are getting reliable WiFi - I sure didn't. > > Robert Nelson suggested that I try using a dongle using an Atheros > chipset. I ordered a NetGear WNA1100 but soon discovered that it won't run > in the Angstrom distribution, which by default doesn't provide the > ath9k_htc driver and associated firmware. This was really disappointing to > me, since I had already made quite an investment in learning all about > Angstrom. I was able to bitbake a > version<http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/building-angstrom>of the > distribution that included the driver, but was unable to build or > find a version of the firmware that would work in Angstrom. I have since > given up and switched to Ubuntu, which includes support for this dongle > natively. My WiFi is now rock solid with this adapter. > > A plea to the makers: please bundle the ath9k_htc driver and associated > firmware <http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k_htc> with the > standard Angstrom distribution. > > t > *l;dr: Install Ubuntu > <http://embeddedprogrammer.blogspot.com/2012/10/beaglebone-installing-ubuntu-1210.html> > > on the Bone (I used the latest raring image > <http://rcn-ee.net/deb/rootfs/raring>), buy this dongle > <http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-WNA1100-802-11n-Wi-Fi-Adapter/dp/B0036R9XRU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367506309&sr=8-1&keywords=wna1100>, > > follow these directions > <http://embeddedprogrammer.blogspot.com/2013/01/beaglebone-using-usb-wifi-dongle-to.html> > > to get reliable WiFi.* > Thanks to all who attempted to help me - hopefully this post will help > others. > > -- For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
