Hi,

I am in the market for a couple of wireless pcmcia cards to plug into my laptops (one being used as router)

does anybody have any recommendations re which may be the better purchase?
currently I am looking at the D-link 650 and the Netgear MA401.

about the only requirement I have is that I can hack one of the cards & attach an external antenna, I know this can be done with the D-link card but am concerned about its reliability.

Is the Netgear MA401 adaptable in this regard?

TIA

Smerk.

The DWL-650, not the DWL-650H or the DWL-650A or the DWL-650+, but the plain old DWL-650 is a well supported Prism2 card. (actually, the DWL-650H is covered too, but its a bit of a hack.)

The MA401 is also just another Prism2 card.
They will both work (with some compiling and a little bit of file bashing), with the orinoco_cs modules, as well as prism2_cs modules from the www.linux-wlan.net project, and you can even get a pcmcia card sporting laptop to act as an Infrastructure based network Access Point with the host_ap modules.

As far as an antenna... I have no idea, how big is the space you're trying to cover?

Cheers,

Finegan

Hi again,

Doing some more research, have come accross some very reasonably priced Orinoco silver cards with antenna jack thingy so no mucking about with cards..

My new question is can I set one of these cards up to behave as an AP like the prismII cards??

the distance I want to cover is about 500-750 metres, main problem is lack of LOS due to lots of palm trees (finally found something to complain about when living in the tropics!) without putting a 10m pole on me house. Being in a cyclone prone area I'm trying to keep everything as low as possible..

Thanks for your reply Finegan!

the price of these cards is so good, I am now wondering if I can set up a bridge using them..

any thoughts??

Bridging is more than possible, a headache is all, its all in the kernel, anything that you can network under Linux you can bridge. (for the sane part, maybe you can bridge a parrallel connection to ethernet, I don't want to know.)

As far as an antenna, all of the silver and gold cards have an antenna pop-plug and a screw jack for them, I've never used one.

In an open air connection, basic cards with nothing to add a directional adjustment to them, in linux laptops with vanilla orinoco_cs drivers, I was able to keep 2Mbit over about 100 meters, give or take. Maybe they'll go further, I'm not certain...

A half a kilometer is asking a bit much I think, any obstructions and the signal starts to ramp downwards. I work in a library where we had to put an AP about every 100 feet just because this place is so much marble, and these are real APs, carrying a lot more than the 5V cards.

There are plenty of ways to tune a connection though, googling for some of the nutiness people have gotten into will show you a lot.

Cheers,

Finegan

Why not the 650+? That is the one I was considering for Red Hat 7.3

Thanks,
Mike

Orinocos should be your first choice, get the golds though not the silver. 500M won't happen without an external antenna. A yagi on one side should be sufficient, on both better. Or you could do a pringle can special.

Edit: The reason for the golds over the silver is the level of WEP supported. If you don't care about WEP then silvers are just as good.

How do I find out what companies use the Orinoco chipset? I will be using a WAP + router/switch (Linksys, DLink, or Netgear) to connect to my cable modem.

I just get Orinoco cards for my Linux boxes. Not an endorsement but here is where I get them from. Support for the Prism II has improved a lot since I went through my wireless adventure though.

On a side note if you need wireless but you don't need it portable I strongly reccommend the Linksys WET11. They are easy to set up and are great for bridging a wired network to an AP. From the standpoint of the computers on the network the wireless bridge is transparent.

Most of the cards from NetGear, Linksys, and D-Liink use the PRISM2 chipset. But as I said, the support for support for PRISM2 is fine, I just got soured to them due to early drivers. Heck I have a Linksys in my Zaurus. Linux-wlan has a decent list of the manufacturers who use the PRISM2, that would be my first stop.

Does anyone know if the D Link 650+ has a prism2 chipset? This is the card on sale this week ... and I do have a very limited budget.

Separate question - the AP/router/switch will be transparent to the machines correct?

No, it is not, its a TI chipset I think... if not its some Broadcom, I can't remember, search through the forums here and you'll find the 2 or 3 threads where people got land mined by this card. Its not supported at all.

Cheers,

Finegan

Ok, then that card is out ...

does anyone know about this 3Com card? I just found it because it has the retractable antenna, so I don't have to remove the card when transporting

3Com 3CRWE62092B

Thanks again for everyone's help!
-Mike

That's the new X-Jack, its an Atmel chipset card. Here's the driver page about it, they're not in the kernel yet by default:

http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/news.html

I've walked a few people through installation of the USB flavor of that chipset with various results, its going to take some work for certain. Check their mailing lists.

Cheers,

Finegan

I strongly suggest that you get a prism2 card or an Orinoco if you will need an external antenna. Other cards may or may not be supported but these are well supported. Yes it may cost you $20 more but it pays off in the long run.

A prism2 will take an hour or so to set-up. An atmel a day or more, if you can get it running at all. How much is your time worth to you?