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The router is in my basement and my laptop is located directly above the router in my kitchen. This product is a piece of junk. Needless to say, I'm returning this immediately. I am highly disappointed, as I paid even more for this at Wal-Mart for $34.95 + tax. Setup was amazingly difficult (definitely not a "plug 'n play" device) - it was impossible to connect despite the wireless connection status saying "connected". After I finally got it working because apparently the Belkin connectivity utility requests a Hex key for the network password instead of the actual passphrase, it loses signal every 5 minutes or so - NOT exaggerating.
I used this for almost 4 weeks without losing any connection, in case of lost connection the router has to be reset. I fix computers and I tried this with few different pcs, desktop and laptop and never had any problem, one thing I realized is if you live near where more people have wireless route it will pick all signals near by therefore the best and fast way to connect is manually, double click the icon in the system tray select your router and follow to connect, of course if you encrypted your router which you should you have to enter the password. I decided to use this adapter because I purchased a belkin wireless router I figured that being the same brand it would work better, so got that right, it worked and I tried different router brand with no problem. I set my router on a first floor and set this in the basement about 30 feet away in the back room, good reception about 80 to 85% most the time, so bought another adapter exactly the same and set another pc in the basement but closer to the router right bellow about 10 feet away and I had no problem at all.
Apt-get install zd1211-firmware. Plug dongle in. Steps to make it work in Debian Lenny are simple.1. I strongly recommend either networkmanager-kde or networkmanager-gnome depending on your desktop.3. Check the network manager icon for your new wireless ethernet adapter.It's really that simple. Make sure you have the non-free repos enabled and updated apt. If you have just installed Debian and don't know what that means, then figure that out first before continuing.2.
For a while it's been given to disconnecting from my wireless network now and then, often just long enough to disconnect me from my IM client so that I'd miss a message, but not long enough for my client to switch to offline mode. (Incidentally, my modem/router is only about two yards away, on the other side of the wall).
Speaking of unplugging this thing, it's also incredibly particular about where it's plugged back in--if it's not the same USB port used during installation, it will not work.Lately, the adapter will randomly uninstall itself when I reboot. It's doing that today, about every 10 minutes or so, and currently the only fix is to unplug it for a few seconds.
This wireless adapter is awful. Sometimes it'll inexplicably only pick up a couple of them, neither of which will be mine, of course.
Yes, this means reinstallation at least every other time I turn my computer on.You're wasting your money up-front on a crappy bit of technology that will waste lots of your time for months to come. I have had numerous problems with it, something new every week, never a dull moment.
Sometimes it will refuse to pick up any wireless networks within range--but there are at least a dozen around here.
Just use the regular CL tools and you're up and going. The only thing that threw me for a few minutes is that it is seen as eth1, not wlan0 or ra0. Works great with Slackware 12.1. I'm using it with WEP.
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