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Re: Network issues with lan and wifi



Guido Martínez wrote:
> I recently purchased a 802.11n wifi pci card and placed it my pc.
> After that, I proceeded to install debian. I noted that I could not
> configure the wifi network from the installer (it's probably possible,
> but I don't know how) so I attached a network cable and the
> installation ran smoothly.

It is impossible for me to tell from your words if you have a card
that isn't supported or if you just weren't able to drive it.

At this point in history the debian-installer only supports WEP wifi
networking and does not support WPA/WPA2.  Yet.  All things happen
eventually.  So if you were trying to connect to an open wifi access
point it should have been fine.  If you were trying to connect to an
access point with WEP it should have been possible, if somewhat
tedious to configure.  But if you were trying to connect to a WPA/WPA2
access point you would have been blocked by the fact that there isn't
code in the program to do it.

> Now I'm booting into debian, with the cable still connected since I
> have no network manager for wifi,

After you have installed the system and booted into it then for wifi
there are three main ways to go.  By default NetworkManager is
installed.  NetworkManager will either work fine for you or cause you
endless grief.  It has been the topic of much discussion on the list.
The best alternative is to install 'wicd' instead of NM.  It works
much better than NetworkManager.  The third option is to do it the
long manual way using your own full configuration.

For a mobile device I recommend wicd.  For a fixed device that uses
wifi, if I had one of those of my own then I would use a fixed,
manually specified wpa_supplicant configuration.

> and the connection is crappy. It's not a hardware or internet
> problem since this same PC in windows has no issues, as the other
> PC's in my house.

A wired connection should work very well.  A wired connection should
work much better than a wifi connection.  If a wired connection is
available I would always prefer it over a wifi connection.  However
even I use a wifi connection for my mobile devices just out of
convenience when performance and reliability isn't needed.

> Now I removed the wifi card and the network runs with no problems.

That is very unexpected.

> What could be causing this? I'll provide info if you need any

Are you sure you don't have a bad cable or connection and simply the
process of moving things around caused it to work better now?  I have
seen that too many times.

Install 'ethtool' and post the output of it.

  # apt-get install ethtool

  # ethtool eth0

Bob

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