How do I get a Belkin F5D8053 wireless adapter working?

I've tried getting my Belkin N Wireless adapter to work on Ubuntu many times with no luck at all. Each time I seem to arrive at a dead end.

After some thorough searching of UbuntuForums and WifiDocs I've gathered some information and narrowed the problem down to an issue with the rtl819xU driver.

Here's some info that may help:

$ sudo lshw -C network *-network DISABLED description: Wireless interface physical id: 1 bus info: usb@1:2 logical name: wlan0 serial: 00:22:75:38:52:ac capabilities: ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rtl819xU multicast=yes wireless=802.11b/g/n
$ sudo lsmod
Module Size Used by
vesafb 13449 1
snd_ice1724 106559 2
snd_ice17xx_ak4xxx 13163 1 snd_ice1724
snd_ac97_codec 105614 1 snd_ice1724
ac97_bus 12642 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_ak4xxx_adda 18436 2 snd_ice1724,snd_ice17xx_ak4xxx
snd_ak4114 14326 1 snd_ice1724
snd_pt2258 12986 1 snd_ice1724
snd_i2c 13831 2 snd_ice1724,snd_pt2258
snd_ak4113 14307 1 snd_ice1724
snd_pcm 80244 4 snd_ice1724,snd_ac97_codec,snd_ak4114,snd_ak4113
fglrx 2434640 121
snd_seq_midi 13132 0
snd_rawmidi 25269 2 snd_ice1724,snd_seq_midi
binfmt_misc 13213 1
snd_seq_midi_event 14475 1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq 51291 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
ppdev 12849 0
snd_timer 28659 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device 14110 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
dcdbas 14054 0
r8192u_usb 297246 0
snd 55295 16
snd_ice1724,snd_ac97_codec,snd_ak4xxx_adda,snd_ak4114,snd_pt2258,snd_i2c,snd_ak4113,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
soundcore 12600 1 snd
parport_pc 32111 1
snd_page_alloc 14073 1 snd_pcm
shpchp 32345 0
lp 13349 0
parport 36746 3 ppdev,parport_pc,lp
usbhid 41704 0
hid 77084 1 usbhid
e100 40108 0
floppy 60032 0
$ sudo iwconfig
wlan0 802.11b/g/n Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Bit Rate:1 Mb/s Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Management:off Link Quality=0/100 Signal level=0 dBm Noise level=0 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

I'd like to know if 1) Is the driver is properly installed and recognized by Ubuntu? 2) What can I do to load the drivers properly and make use of the adapter?

Thanks!

1 Answer

If you have a 050d:815f version that uses Realtek chip rtl8192su then follow the steps below to install the drivers. I've tried it on version 10.04, but it should work on 11.04 as well.

• Make sure you have 050d:815f.

  lsusb | grep Belkin

• Create a directory to store the driver.

  sudo mkdir /lib/firmware/RTL8192SU

• Download the driver. Make sure you have internet connection enabled or use other pc and copy it over to the created directory.

  sudo wget

• Unzip the driver.

  sudo gunzip rtl8192sfw.bin.gz

• Restart the adapter. Just plug it off and back on. The light on the adapter should start blinking after few seconds, and the list of connections will appear.

If it doesn't work try following the steps outlined in this to troubleshoot and get the exact error message page.

If you're desperate on making it work I'd suggest getting an adapter from this list.

Unfortunately an integrated Wi-Fi card on my laptop is performing by a factor of 30 better then the Belking USB adapter. My Broadband connection is 10Mbit, and the download speed is @ 0.3 Mbit, which is ridiculous. Wondering if that is a problem with Linux or with an adapter. This is my second Belking USB, and I'd never buy another...

After more testing I found that on Windows 7 the same USB adapter performs at 0.8 Mbit in Windows, which is just 15 times slower then the built-in (much older in fact) adapter in my laptop, and uses only 8% of available throughput. Claims that it is "Best for Speed & Coverage" seem to be ridiculous. And the conclusion seems to be that this USB adapter is a piece of crap.