How to get my Asus PCE-N15 wireless adapter to work on 13.10

Question

Recently, I've bought a computer, on which I installed a dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 13.10 installation. I have temporary access to a wired connection, but I bought a Asus PCE-N15 wireless network adapter to connect. For Windows 7, I got this adapter to work using the drivers. In Ubuntu 13.10, however, I did not manage to connect it properly.

Following some good leads on askubuntu, I got abit closer, for example

• step by step Ubuntu 12.04 install of Realtek RTL8188CE driver
• Issues installing wireless network driver

I downloaded and compile the drivers from https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver . I followed the instructions in the README.md file coming with this repository.

Before I started altering anything, I have the following output from lsmod | grep ^rtl

rtl8192ce              53550  0 
rtl_pci                26641  1 rtl8192ce
rtlwifi                63229  2 rtl_pci,rtl8192ce
rtl8192c_common        48877  1 rtl8192ce

After following the instructions (i.e. also editing /etc/modules/ and rebooting), I cannot seem to add any off the other modules.

root@bernhard-desktop:/home/bernhard# lsmod | grep ^rtl
rtl8192ce             137725  0 
rtlwifi               110108  1 rtl8192ce
root@bernhard-desktop:/home/bernhard# modprobe rtl_pci
FATAL: Module rtl_pci not found.
root@bernhard-desktop:/home/bernhard# modprobe rtl_8192c_common
FATAL: Module rtl_8192c_common not found.

When rebooting, after a little while, I get a notification that tells me that I am connect to my Wifi-network. However, when I try to open a web-page or make an ssh-connection, I do not get any information transfered, which is not a problem for my wired connection.

Proof of the above statements is as follows

root@desktop# nmcli d
DEVICE     TYPE              STATE        
wlan0      802-11-wireless   connected    
eth0       802-3-ethernet    unavailable

root@desktop# ping -c2 4.2.2.2
PING 4.2.2.2 (4.2.2.2) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- 4.2.2.2 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 1007ms

My question is the following: What am I overlooking, or doing wrong, and how can I fix this issue and connect to the internet by wifi, using my Asus adapter?

Answer 1

First, the driver you built from github does not depend nor require rtl_pci nor rtl_8192c_common. The module mac80211 is required. Is it loaded?

lsmod | grep 80211

Please be certain that any ethernet cable is detached as you try to connect. Network Manager will prefer ethernet over wireless and is intended to disallow wireless if ethernet is available.

Second, be sure your router is set to WPA2-AES only, no TKIP nor mixed mode WPA/WPA2. Experiment with and without N speeds enabled.

Finally, let's try a driver parameter:

sudo modprobe -r rtl8192ce
sudo modprobe rtl8192ce swenc=1

If it helps, we'll write a quick file to make it persistent.

Look for any clues as to why it isn't working with:

cat /var/log/syslog | grep -e rtl -e etwork | tail -n 25

As the file is quite sizable, post it here and give us the link in your reply: http://paste.ubuntu.com