realtek 8172 wireless controller nonfunctional

On a Lenovo Thinpad T410 equipped with realtek 8172 wireless controler, the wireless runs *very* poorly under the stock lucid kernel. manually deleting the rtl8192*ko drivers and installing rtl8192se drivers from source using dkms(version 2.6.0015.0127.2010) solves the problem, even though the git changelog suggests that these drivers are already present in the 2.6.32-17 kernel. Has source been modified in some way?

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Mar 28 05:15:28 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta amd64 (20100318)
NonfreeKernelModules: r8192se_pci
Package: linux-image-2.6.32-17-generic 2.6.32-17.26
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_CA.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-17.26-generic 2.6.32.10+drm33.1
Regression: No
Reproducible: No
SourcePackage: linux
TestedUpstream: No
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-17-generic x86_64