Configuration of the D-Link DWA-125 in Managed Mode

This post will show you how to configure the D-Link DWA-125 wireless USB adapter in managed mode.

From the menu Preferences, open the Network Connections tool.

Using the button Add, create one entry for the interface. There are two entries in this example, Wireless connection 1 and 2.

Under the tab Wireless, enter the SSID of your network. The Infrastructure mode must be selected. You also need to enter the MAC address of the adapter (can be obtained from the label on the back of the adapter or using the Linux command ifconfig).

Under the tab  IPv4 Settings, select the Automatic (DHCP) Method.

Under the tab Wireless Security, select the security protocol and enter the parameters specific to your network.

Several security protocols are available, as shown below.

Click the button Apply at the end. If everything goes well, the OS posts the following feedback to the user:

The Linux command iwconfig should return a result similar to this.

ra0       Ralink STA  ESSID:”useay”  Nickname:”RT2870STA”

Mode:Managed  Frequency=2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:90:96:9F:26:BB

Bit Rate=54 Mb/s

RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off

Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX

Link Quality=100/100  Signal level:-53 dBm  Noise level:-83 dBm

Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0

Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Note that the WEP key is posted in clear and has been erased in this example.

D-Link DWA-125 on Linux Ubuntu 10.04

This post will show you how to install the D-Link DWA-125 Wireless USB adapter on Linux Ubuntu 10.04 in the VMware environment.

All the software that you need to achieve the installation is available here.

Firstly, as shown in the following video, you need to install Linux Ubuntu on VMware. You need the file ubuntu1004-vmt.zip. Uncompress it in some directory. Under VMware, open the file named Ubuntu.vmx, from the uncompressed directory.

The default user is “user”. The password for  both “user” and “root” is “password”.

Download and uncompress the file that contains the driver for the DWA-125: DPO_RT3070_LinuxSTA_V2.3.0.4_20100604.tar.bz2.

The following video shows how to install the driver for the DWA-125. In summary, you have to “cd” to the directory where the driver has been uncompressed. Using the Linux command “su”, you switch user to root mode. Then you enter “make” to compile the driver. You need to create the system directory “/etc/Wireless”, where you copy the file “RT2870STA.dat”. Finally, you “cd” to “os/linux” and install the driver as a module using the Linux command “insmod”.

You are now ready to start using the driver. On VMware, Ubuntu needs to be explicitly connected to the D-Link DWA-125 USB adapter as shown in the following video.

After a few seconds, the DWA-125 USB adapter starts blinking, showing normal operation. The Linux command “iwconfig” can be used to inspect and change the configuration of the interface to the adapter.

Good luck!