How to add 802.11ac adapter for 5 GHz WiFi (RTL8811AU )

16.04 networking drivers usb realtek-wireless

16,617

Turns out the last command is not necessary and gives an error message with no meaning.

In Ubuntu 16.04 the driver gets installed into two places:

/sys/bus/usb//drivers/rtl8812au
/sys/module/rtl8812au

And it automatically loads after a reboot.

When the ifconfig command is issued, it can clearly be seen operating as wlx00e0xxxxxxxx - reflecting the HWaddr in the name of the new interface.

Then by clicking on the "up/down" icon at the upper right of the screen the 5 GHz networks are clearly visible in the first part of the WiFi Networks() section.

To recap, the commands necessary are simply these:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential git
git clone https://github.com/abperiasamy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux.git
(Enter username and password for Github)
cd rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux
make
sudo make install
(REBOOT)

Then voila, it works.

Note that when plugged into a USB 2.0 port, the speed will be limited to 433 Mbps.

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SDsolar

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Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

SDsolar over 1 year
Plugging in a Dual-Band WiFi adapter with the Realtek RTL8811AU chipset does nothing visible and it does not show up in ifconfig even after a reboot.

Clearly the drivers must be installed separately.

--> I previously verified the precise model of adapter in Device Manager on a Win7 system using the same adapter. This is important because there are several types of RTL8811 chips.

The driver disk has a directory of Linux files on it that I do not recognize as working with Ubuntu.

Google leads here:

Ubuntu 16.04 8811AU Wireless driver (Medium.com)

which says to do this (paraphrased):
```
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential git
git clone https://github.com/abperiasamy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux.git
(Enter username and password for Github)
cd rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe 8812au
```
and all seems to work until that final command, where I get the error message

modprobe: FATAL: Module 8812au not found in directory /lib/modules/4.13.0-38-generic

None of the 5 GHz networks show up in the "up/down" WiFi settings.

Question: How to add RTL8811AU 802.11ac adapter for 5 GHz High-Speed WiFi
- SDsolar about 6 years
  
  TNX for the suggestion. Just rebooted then retried the sudo modprobe 8812au and got the same response. Went to /lib/modules/4.13.0-38-generic and it definitely is not there. So did a find . "88*" and also a find . "*88*"and it did not find it.
Johnny1am over 3 years

Thank you for sharing! I'm curious if 5Ghz wifi works for you and if so, is it a unique SSID for the 5Ghz network? I've read there are issues with this driver/hardware trying to connect if a 2.4Ghz network uses the same SSID as a 5Ghz network (something that should work fine). Sources: amazon.com/gp/product/B07FGX8LBF github.com/abperiasamy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux/issues/38