Feb 13
Getting the Alfa AWUS036H working on Ubuntu
The Alfa AWUS036H, based on the Realtek 8187 chipset, is a really nice unit, but it tends to have a few quirks on Ubuntu. Here’s how I got mine working.
First make sure that you have the rtl8187 driver installed and loaded by running (do NOT plug your Alfa in yet, if you already have it plugged in, unplug it, disable any existing networking equipment, restart the wireless by right clicking on the network manager and unchecking “Wireless”, then recheck it)
Code:
sudo modprobe rtl8187
Now plug your Alfa in. You should see that the Network Manager identifies the dongle as a “Realtek RTL8187″. Go ahead and associate with a network if you can.
Now I was using the Alfa with an 8dBi antenna. You do the math to realize how much power that is, and you’re probably getting a bunch of reflections and echos. We need to turn the power down.
Code:
sudo iwconfig wlan0 txpower 50mW
Where wlan0 is the name of your dongle.
I also had an issue where the dongle was identifying the signal strength as much lower than it actually was, so it set my bit rate really low (like 1Mb/s)
To fix this, run
Code:
sudo iwconfig wlan0 rate auto
And it should read 54 Mb/s when you do another iwconfig
Now you need to reassociate to the network. You do this by going to your network manager and right clicking on the network you’ve already associated to.
After doing this my networking was screaming fast. Also continued to work after reboot, but the power went back up. I left it alone and things seemed stable. Held a stable ping over 2000 sequences with around 1% packet loss.
Hope this helps.
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In reply to your post i think you have a valid point about tx settings as the tx power of the awus036h proberbly exceeds the power of the router your trying to connect to.
I have the problem of connecting to a network with a good signal and not being able to browse the internet? But if i put the adapter on my windows vista system it will connect to the same network and browse the internet. where as most networks do connect and i can see the internet but not to the degree of windows. I am baffeled mabee its a driver prolem i don’t know but it just seems the performance of this adapter is not so good running it on ubuntu. If anyone has experienced this prob I would love to hear from you
Most of the problems I’ve found related to the AWUS036H on Linux are due to this particular issue in general. The drivers have a few bugs too, like it will report you have a -89db signal when you in fact have a rather strong connection (and a much higher signal rate than actually reported).
I think part of the problem may also be related to NetworkManager which has a tendency to create chaos on a sane network at times. But ultimately following the steps I prescribed to the letter will get you online at least 9 out of 10 times. I’ve not really seen it not work on my machine
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i had trouble getting this to work at my parent’s house. it would connect to the network but then it would get like 30-40% packet loss when i pinged the router and it wouldn’t load web pages.
then i took it to my house and it got on my own wireless network no problem. i put the sucker on top of my car and i could load web pages from about a block away. _nice_. i hope it keeps working for me.
Thank you, I tried using the backtrack Operating system but it failed so I’m going to use Ubuntu.
Thanks for posting this guide! I was having those same problems with my Alfa AWUS036H w/ 5dbi antenna.