Ubuntu 10.4 (Lucid Lynx) and Broadcom BCM4312

words by Brian Racer

This is basically just a repost of the same issue I had when Karmic Koala launched

Ubuntu 10.4 (Lucid Lynx) launched today and I figured it was time to do an install from scratch onto my Dell D830 Latitude laptop. Everything went quite smoothly but when it started up I noticed two issues:

Problem 1: No wireless

I know the Broadcom card inside the laptop isn’t the greatest, but the last two Ubuntu releases it has worked out of the box. The following command enabled the card after a reboot:

sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source

Problem 2: Really slow DNS lookups (because of IPV6)

As documented on Launchpad, there still doesn’t seem to be an official fix. Strangely disabling IPV6 in /etc/sysctl.conf didn’t solve anything, however disabling it in Firefox at least fixes the issue in the browser. Just type about:config in the address bar, and set network.dns.disableIPv6 to false.

  • http://www.speaker-hearer.com/ Benjamin Keil

    Thanks for the network.dns.disableIPv6 tip. But I think you mean “true” :)

  • Beginner User

    THANK YOU for the Broadcom Wireless
    one line solved many nights of searching the internet

    sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source

    Thank you again … Keep the good working on.

  • Ubuntu User

    Don know why Ubunto does not include such thing from the beginning
    is it hard to be considered ? 10.04 without this solution?

  • Johann

    The ubuntuforum is full of complaints about WiFi speed, and it’s not hardware related, at least not to a single chipset. As it seems to me it is a WiFi subsystem or even kernel regression.

    There also seems to be an IPv6 issue, but as has already been noted, simply disabling IPv6 does not help. I narrowed down the problem, and in case you connected by WiFI please try the following:

    When speed is slow: disable WiFi
    re-enable WiFi and wait for re-association with AP. Is speed back to normal?

    Also see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1473022&page=3 and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1487039

    If it has helped, it won’t last for long, speed drops back to painful slow after some time.
    Consider assigning yourself to
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bcmwl/+bug/581936
    to raise awareness.

  • http://jetpackweb.com Brian Racer

    Hey Johann, thanks for the reply and those suggestions! It turned out my IPv6 problems were caused by my router however, I documented a fix at http://jetpackweb.com/blog/2010/05/05/netopia-routers-slow-dns-and-ipv6/

  • http://wwwprimosearch.com primosearch.com

    The ubuntuforum is full of complaints about WiFi speed, and it’s not hardware related, at least not to a single chipset. As it seems to me it is a WiFi subsystem or even kernel regression.
    +1

  • Guest22

    Solved my wireless problems, thank you!