Ubuntu – How to get the Lenovo T61 to connect to a wireless network

I think you might be making this harder than it has to be. I have the same situation with my laptop (except it's a normal ethernet port instead of a dock). When I plug in the wired network, it automatically takes precedence over the wireless and everything goes over the (faster) ethernet cord. The wireless was connected all along, but unused. When I unplug the cable it falls back to using the wireless connection.

So, have you tried to see if this does what you want already? I'm using nothing more than the standard network applet that comes with Ubuntu.

I don't know how much relevant this may be, still an Ubuntu newbie, but I had similar problems with my Ralink 5362 card.

The only thing it seemed to work was the following:

There is a bug in the Debian Avahi daemon in Ubuntu. And to resolve this you need to edit the following file /etc/nsswitch.conf as follows.

Type the following in the command line

sudo -H gedit  /etc/nsswitch.conf

This will open the nsswitch.conf file in the text editor. Then simply change the following line

hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4

to the below line and save the file.

hosts:          files dns

Reset your internet connection or probably restart your system and your wireless connection should be back on top speed. This worked for me at least.