I am using a Toshiba Satellite A15 (with no internal wireless card). I recently bought a Linksys WAP and PCMCIA card (WAP11 and WPC11 v4, 802.11b). The WAP11 worked perfectly with linux, as it should, routers are (should be) hardware independent. The WPC11 v4 did _not_ work with linux, as i should have known had i checked the HCL. I am preparing to return the WPC11 v4 and buy a Netgear WG511T (802.11g/b), which _is_ compatible with linux. I am no linux newbie, but not great at wireless networking. My question is this: I understand that the Netgear card will work with the Linksys router, because 802.11g is backwards-compatible with 802.11b. But will it work with the linksys router, as they are made by different companies? I am pretty sure they will, but i do not want to make an unnessacary purchace. Thank you in advance for your help.

(By the way, i already know that the Netgear card is 802.11g, and even though it is backwards compatible with 802.11b, i should still buy an 802.11b card. I have my own reasons for buying an 802.11g card, mainly because i may upgrade the router and my other computers' cards in the future to 802.11g).

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No worries about the differences in manufacturers. As long as both the card and the router adhere to 802.11 standards (and both Linksys and Netgear certainly do) you should be able to mix these without a problem.

Also, don't worry about mixing a g card with a b router. That is the same situation I've got and it works fine. You are working at b speeds, but if you upgrade your router later, you only have to upgrade the router, not the router and the card. Personally, I see no reason to buy b gear unless cash is the deciding factor.

Exactly what i thought. Thanks.

Actually I should add one thought that occurred to me later....If you mix b and g gear, the entire network will work at b speeds, even if you are connecting two pieces of g hardware. For example, if you have three computers on your network, 2 with g and 1 with b, even if you are transferring a file between the two g computers, the transfer will happen at b speed if the b computer is connected to the network. So if you need g speeds across the network, you need to upgrade all of your b devices at a single go.

yeah... i knew that... but thanks anyways