Hi,
I am looking for Wireless NIC's that are supported by RH Linux. I saw some wierd NIC's supported that are hard to obtain from local retail stores. Are there any known name brand wireless NIC available from Netgear, Linksys, D-Link, etc?

Or shall I purchase any Wireless NIC and use some hacks to get it working. I want to minimize the amount of time to install and configure my home wireless network. I am running RH 7.x Linux on a PC and am trying to hook it to my existing wireless Network at home using Netgear Wireless Router (MR314).

Thanks in advance

If you are looking for a PCI card for your desktop then the NetGear MA311 works just fine with the wlan-ng drivers. There is an RPM set available, but I am not sure that the 7.X versions are still out there, but if you google for wlan-ng RPM you should find them.

If you have the c compiler and tools loaded, you can easily build the driver from scratch. Look here:

http://www.siliconvalleyccie.com/lin...mp11-linux.htm

This page is about a different card, but if you exclude the pcmcia stuff, the install of tar-ball is the same.

Cheers--
Charles

Hi cnjohnson,
This definitely helps, however, is there any configuration doc which will guide me with install/config after I physically install my Wireles NIC card? If I simply install the wlan-ng driver using rpm-i * command, should that be enough?

Thanks again

Depends on what your set up is whether just installing will be enough. There are "instructions" and you can find them here, but because they are generic you might stumble around.

If you are using dhcp to get an IP address for your box, you may have to do nothing other than install the RPM's and restart your network.

If you are using a static IP address, or using WEP, or wanting to make sure your card contacts a specific Access Point (i.e., using an actual ESSID), then you will have to edit two or three files:

/etc/sysconfig/networking-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
/etc/wlan/wlan.conf
/etc/wlan/wlancfg.conf (or something similar).

The first one controls your IP, gateway, whether you come up on boot and other info about your network. The other two control wep, channel, link speed and the like. The RPM's will install these files for you, but you may have to edit them.

I did, but they are mostly explanatory, so you can give them a read. If you need any help, just ask. I don't have access to the machines during my day (Central Daylight Time, USA) but I can post whatever config info you need of an evening.

Again, be sure and read through the docs.

If you absolutely, positively cannot get wlan-ng to work, you can follow these simple and graphic instructions to load the orinoco_pci driver. This will work, but you won't get the best performance. It will be good performance, but wlan-ng really is way better. The orinoco stuff is getting too old for the newer cards. IMHO, of course (and what do I know! )

Cheers--
Charles

dyoung123,

I took cnjohnson's advice and went for the MA311 (netgear) using the RPMs from
http://prism2.unixguru.raleigh.nc.us/
and it was a breeze (with cnjohnson's advice)
although the config files are a little cryptic (no pun intented) as I had a little trouble getting encryption to work

I had previously tried 2 other cards with no luck.
DO NOT go for a Linksys WMP11 it has unsupported (Broadcom) chipset. They changed from intersil at some stage. If you are daring try the Minitar card but the driver support (read as configs)is very weak at the moment but they are improving.

Good luck

MikeS