[tlug] 802.11b PCMCIA Options

[<mocm@example.com>]

Rodrego Alverez writes:
 > My office has just installed an 802.11b wireless LAN network. However, the equipment being supplied is Buffalo AirStation cards and the Access Point are also a Buffalo AirStation using WEP. So far, I have not been overly impressed with these cards as some Japanese Win98 users had difficulties getting the drivers to run it seems.
 > 
 > Although these cards are marketed as Windows only and have their own windows software driver CDs, a bit of searching revealed that it uses a Lucent  chipset which does have linux drivers (the old driver being: wvlan_cs.o but a while back development efforts were transferred to the orinoco_cs.o  project, which seems to be also included in the 2.4.12 kernel).
 > 
 > Additionally, I was in Akihabara this weekend and found a Linux compatible Corega 802.11b card (and it is cheaper than the Buffalo card).  Card details are at: http://www.corega.co.jp/product/list/wireless/wlpccb11.htm  
 > 
 > 1) Can I get confirmation that, given 802.11b is a standard there should be no problem using this card instead.
 > 

It's a standard and unless you are using ad-hoc mode which had some
earlier versions that were not standard, there shouldn't be a
problem. Since you have a base station you will be using the managed
mode, so no problem


 > 2)Does anyone have experience with either of these cards under Linux? How good of a brand is Corega? Ideally any card would also function under an English-language version of  Windows as well.
 > 

I bought a buffalo card 2 years ago and there was no problem. There
are mainly two chipsets used in such cards. The lucent/orinoco and the
prism2. Both are well supported under linux and as long as you know
which kind you have it won't be a problem to adjust your pcmcia
configuration in case that the card is not recognized by the cardmanager.

 > 3)Are there any other card recommendations?
 > 

prism2 cards are usually cheaper and there is a linux project for a
base station that uses this driver. I had been using it until recently
to set up my old notebook as a base station until the fan became too
loud and the commercial base stations too cheap. 
Otherwise, any card should be ok, unless you are really looking for
maximum throughput or minimum power consumption. I haven't done any
testing in that area. I have used or am using cards from Buffalo,
Orinoco, elsa, 1st wave and some noname cards and they are all ok.
You may want to think about getting a CF card instead of pcmcia. You
can use it with an adapter in your notebook and maybe later in a
PDA. The also use less power.

 > 4) Any problems in getting the networking to work?  Any software for controlling the networking setting or such?
 > 

I guess there are some gui tools, I usually set it up by hand. For
more info have a look at
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/ .


Marcus

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| Dr. Marcus O.C. Metzler        |                                   |
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