TP-Link TL-WN422G

TP-Link TL-WN422G

• chipset: ZD1211
• usbid: 0ace:1215
• Driver: I'm using a driver that came in the box and which was built in June 2007.

Info

Here is my report on using the TP-Link TL-WN422G with ndiswrapper. As I shall explain, this device is officially supported by a native Linux driver, but it doesn't work properly. It appears that with ndiswrapper we get a slightly different manifestation of the same fault, one which does not appear when the device is used with the same Windows driver natively in Windows.

When I use the device in Windows the utility that ships with the device reports reasonable signal quality, e.g 60%. When I use it with ndiswrapper, RutilT reports noise levels of -64dB exactly for all visible access points. The signal levels are only a few dB above this, leading to reported signal quality of between 6% and 12%. I also get the same signal quality reports from the native Linux driver, although RutilT reports noise levels of -256dB for every access point, with signal strength obviously in the range just above this.

One thing I noticed when I was trying to troubleshoot the Linux driver is that the Windows driver contains 4 firmware files, but that Ubuntu only has 3 for the chipset. If I replace the 3 Ubuntu firmware files with 3 of the ones I have extracted, the device works, which means that there is one spare.