USB Wireless NIC Suggestions?
 

Building a new box and it won't be located near the router and I can't run a hard line from the box to the router. Any suggestions for USB/PCI (preferably USB) Wiress NIC's?

I have had great results using Atheros based chipsets in the past with the Madwifi drivers so a wireless NIC with based on this would be a plus. But, really, it doesn't matter as long as it either works natively with the Kernel or I get it to work via installing drivers...

Here's a thread I posted to about one I've used.

Those drivers are now in the kernel afaik. Also check our HCL.

Cool. I'll look it over more throughly. I just read on the Madwifi page that they do NOT support USB based NIC's which is a bummer. Been using Madwifi for years and am very familiar with their drivers. I may just install a PCI-based Atheros Wifi Nic and call it a day...

I have recently purchased an EDIMAX EW-7318USG USB with WPA2 & wireless g support from newegg. Pros: open source driver, firmware available on debian non-free repos, external antenna. Apparently it is supposed to work "out of the box" - not in my case. Maybe with a newer kernel. I got it running with the rt73 module from here: http://homepages.tu-darmstadt.de/~p_larbig/wlan/. It is now running well under Debian Lenny with a 2.6.26 kernel.

For use in a standalone PC (i.e. not a mobile device) I would definitely get
a PCI NIC. Look through our HCL. The issue is what chipset the device has
that you're going to buy. It's hard to tell on some, as they change even
within the same model number.

Hi,

I bought for my home PC - DLink DWA-140 USB stick on rt2870 (ralink) chipset. Tested under Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSuSe, Kubuntu, Slackware64-current and it works perfectly with WEP, WPA1/2. I used NetworkManager applet and WICD - no probs...

The module easy to install from the vendor's site but it is in kernel as well.

Thanks for the responses, guys. I think I will go PCI-Based as it should hold up a little better in the long run since this will be a desktop system and I can find an Atheros based chipset easier.

But I think I am still going to buy a USB Wireless stick anyway just to play with it. They have gotten so cheap there is no reason not to have one "on hand" in case I ever need it.

For a USB dongle, I'd recommend something with a Zydas zd1211 chip. Never had problems with it and the kernel driver is pretty stable.

Last PCI card I put in was the ASUS WL-138g V2

Last USB I used (and still use) is the TRENDnet TEW-424UB.

Both worked fine using wpa2.

yeah, these are good.

I've got a couple, and they work well with my slack 12.1 install (rt73 driver included with 2.6.24 kernel).