This isn't specifically a Linux Wireless question but here goes.

My company is looking for a Wireless abg card for the Airmagent Handheld Analyzer. Airmagnet provides a list of compatible cards on its website. The catch is that we need a card which supports/detects .11i (WPA2) and (.11n) MIMO RF traffic. i.e. can scan for and detect RF activity using these two standards. Does an a/b/g card detect the latter two or I need to specifically look for support ? There isn't any mention I can see of these two standards on the Airmagnet website so maybe it doesn't matter. Am I making sense? I know .11n is still a work in progress as a standard.

lostinvietnam.

You're probably going to need to find a card that explicitly supports 11i and 11n. Asking an 11 a/b/g card to support those would be asking it to be forward compatible, and that isn't likely to happen.

802.11n is not supported by any linux driver yet. However some of the Atheros 802.11n chipsets are supported(using 802.11g) in linux with the madwifi driver. The madwifi driver does not support any usb so you would need to find a pcmcia card for a laptop or built in chipset. I heard that the mac laptops have this chipset.

Some things I know: The 802.11n standard requires multiple radio transceivers. You can sniff 802.11n traffic with an 802.11g card.

Things I ponder: Knowing it takes multiple transceivers and that it is based on the 802.11g means I doubt there will be any n cards that are 802.11a compatible. It wouldn't be worth it to have the extra transmit capabilities built in to the transceivers.

Finding an Atheros card was always hard for me to do. If you want more information about the madwifi drivers look at madwifi.org :-)
I hope you find what you are looking for.

Forgot catering to the 802.11i part of the question. Any driver that supports wpa_supplicant will be able to connect to an 802.11i network.
Any driver that supports monitor mode will be able to capture raw traffic.
To find out what drivers support what here is a good page

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_wireless_drivers

wireless tools in linux are not easy. However when you know them, you can never go back to windows. list of tools to know

iwlist scan

iwconfig (read the man page)

wireshark

wpa_supplicant (way too much to learn it all ask on forums for help)

Actually, 802.11n and 802.11a are compatible, but vendors may not make them that way. The 802.11n standard supports both 2.4GHz (b/g compatible) as well as 5GHz(a compatible) but I think the majority of vendors are sticking to 2.4GHz since 802.11a never really caught on. Still, with some hunting you might find a forward-thinking vendor that has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz support.


Oh, and Welcome to LQ!