WiFi PCMCIA Cards. Recommendations?

the_pearson_person · n00b Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 27

I'm probably posting this on the wrong board for which i apologise.

I'm looking at buying a PCMCIA WiFi card and want to be able to use it under linux! What models and makes do people recommend? I'm looking preferably for a 54mbps card.

Cheers!

Richard

mtombs · Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2004 6:07 pm Post subject:

Couldn't tell you about the speeds, but the prism chipset is pretty well supported. Its on lots of cards, including at least some from netgear and d-link.

the_pearson_person · n00b Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 27

whats good range wise? I've heard the orinoco chipset is the best for range, anyone got any ideas on how well supported the orinoco chipset is?
_________________
Richard
http://www.catdevnull.co.uk

Spyretto · Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2004 9:35 pm Post subject:

I don't know much about the orinocos but have in mind that by using a Prism-based card u can take advantage of the host-ap driver.

Using this u can simulate the function of an Access point and link cards directly (ans so u wont have to buy an AP

)

For greater range buy a card that accepts an external antenna.

I have an EnGenius ( Prism 2.5 ) but i haven't fully test it. It's a 200mw card. Most cards are 30mw.

But remember that if your signal goes far away then the security issue comes.
Most 30mw with external antennas will do the work

I hope I was usefull :roll:

ianhinder · n00b Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 5

I just bought myself a shiny new Netgear 511 PCMCIA card, along with a netgear access point. This is 54 Mbps, and I'm very happy with it. Haven't tested the range. The prism54 drivers seem to work like a charm, and they've just been integrated into the 2.6 kernel, so if you're using that then installation doesn't even involve patching your kernel.

Performance-wise, I've compared linux 2.4 and windows xp, and found them to be roughly equivalent (except when using smbfs; the speed difference between smbfs and windows client is more noticeable on the wireless network than the ethernet; no idea why. linux 2.6 with cifs module is same speed as windows xp, but cifs seems buggy in certain areas). I get single file ftp transfer rates of 22 Mbps in linux, which is higher than anything i've been able to get with windows (the ftp clients all seem slow). i was a bit disappointed not to be able to get closer to 54 Mbps; with ethernet I can reach about 80Mbps with ftp. just had a thought - this was all with 128 bit encryption; don't really want to switch that off!