Wireless N

You may not need ndiswrapper, there may be a native driver available.

Can you give the output of:

sudo lshw -C network; sudo iwlist scan | head -n 20

Thanks

*-network
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+
       vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       physical id: 14
       bus info: pci@0000:00:14.0
       logical name: eth0
       version: 10
       serial: 00:19:db:5c:75:20
       size: 10MB/s
       capacity: 100MB/s
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=8139too driverversion=0.9.28 duplex=half latency=32 link=no maxlatency=64 mingnt=32 multicast=yes port=MII speed=10MB/s
       resources: irq:20 ioport:f000(size=256) memory:dfffe000-dfffe0ff memory:80000000-8000ffff(prefetchable)
  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       physical id: 1
       logical name: wlan0
       serial: 00:18:e7:c3:7e:32
       capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ndiswrapper+net8192su driverversion=1.55+Realtek Semiconductor Corp. ip=10.0.1.10 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g
lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0 Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:1C:DF:FB:6B:4A
                    ESSID:"pavia"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
                    Mode:Managed
                    Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
                    Quality:39/100 Signal level:-71 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
                              24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
                              12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
                    Extra:bcn_int=100
                    Extra:atim=0
          Cell 02 - Address: 00:22:B0:B3:2B:EE
                    ESSID:"sadie's dlink"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
                    Mode:Managed
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality:37/100 Signal level:-72 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
                    Encryption key:on

The Hardware Driver list does show a "871x wireless driver active, but not in use" in the driver list.

ok well it is finding SSIDs and has the IP 10.0.1.10.

If you run:

gksudo gedit /etc/resolv.conf

delete ALL the text in the file and add these 2 lines:

nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

Save the new file and close gedit, close all browsers and retry the web. Does it work?

It works, but I still have to use ndiswrapper and the windows driver. If I remove the windows driver, I get no network connection.

ok, some network devices do need ndiswrapper but a lot have NATIVE drivers so don't need ndiswrapper. Immediately running to ndiswrapper to get wireless running is a real;ly bad idea, in your case it seems to work

Ok so we established your DHCP is not giving out DNS servers too good, if you open up network manager and look at the IPv4 settings you can tell the system to use DHCP for address only, then specify the 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as manually configured DNS servers. Unfortunately network manager and such like overwrite resolv.conf when they get configured via DHCP etc, so you need to put the connection information into network manager for it to be permanent.

I removed the ndiswrapper package and tried the native driver. Nothing showed any signs of connectivity. I downloaded and installed the latest linux driver from Realtek and got some progress. The driver shows up in the Hardware Driver list as active but not in use. If I deactivate it, then reactivate it, it works fine.............at N speeds.....just what I was looking for. Until I reboot....then I have to go thru the same process of deactivating and reactivating all over. This is closer, but not quite finished. Any suggestions..................and thanks for the help in pointing me away from ndiswrapper.

I have come up with a solution. It may not be the absolute best, but it seems to work. I put "modprobe 8712u" into the /etc/rc.local file and the adapter is initialized whenever the computer is rebooted. I have, absolutely, no idea what or why, but after four days of reading and searching all the Ubuntu sites I could, this is what I came up with. Maybe someone could explain to me why this has to be done......if not, that is fine. I will figure it out, at some point in the future.

I had similar observiations using wireles cards with Ubuntu however I too would like more information what is actually happening behind the scenes that produces these issues.

I'm concerned that little progress is happening to improve wireless support and stability.