Wifi interface changes name seemingly at random

Posted by ray_voelker on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by ray_voelker
Published on 2012-09-12T20:02:20Z Indexed on 2012/09/12 21:50 UTC
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12.04

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wireless

I'm currently having some issues getting a wireless interface to work continuously under an install of Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS.

Some of the issues I'm experiencing include

Connection will drop out after some time after it has initially worked.
Interface will be a different name after a reboot. For example, wlan0 will become wlan4 when using the ifconfig -a command.
Ubuntu will take a long time to boot, looking for network adapters.

The purpose of this build is to function as a web kiosk in a library. The computer is supposed to boot up into a web browser, and allow for browsing of the catalog. For some reason this interface does not appear to be working as it should.

Are there any explanations for some of these problems I'm having, and perhaps some solutions?

The wireless card appears as this after doing an lspci ...

Ralink corp. RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI

In the /etc/network/interfaces file I have the following configuration for the interface.

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
     wireless-essid UDwireless
     wireless-mode Managed

Thanks in advance for help on this.

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