What's the best wireless card to get?

pentium4borg · n00b Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 47

I did a quick search for this and didn't find anything, sorry if this has been posted before. (If so, can someone link me?)

I have been through a Broadcom wireless chipset on my laptop, and I'm currently using an Atheros PCMCIA card (using madwifi-ng). It works well, except on my university wireless (which I believe uses Cisco APs) -- the card will deassociate and reassociate with NM every few minutes. There's no predictable pattern. Once in a great while, my machine will hard lock, but only when associated to the university wireless (neither problem appears on any other network, including my own which is on a machine running hostapd).

Anyways, my main question --> What wireless chipset do you recommend I buy? I hear Intel works well, but I really don't like the idea of a binary daemon running all the time. I like my Atheros-based card, but the problems above prevent it from being practical. Ideally, is there a chipset with no binary daemon and no microcode to load? If not, what's my best alternative?

Thanks guys.

Januszzz · Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 8:54 pm Post subject:

Only Zydas.

Bus 007 Device 004: ID 0ace:1215 ZyDAS, some sheet: http://www.bluetake.com/Manuals/bw100/8011bg%20USB%20adapter.pdf

My Zydas has BW100 sign, I guess its a model name.

While I'm responsible for radius authenticated networks at my university, I tried Intel 3945, Intel 4965, some Atheros chips (which take second place) and Broadcom.

Zydas wins in every category: link quality is always better, the card is most stable, the fastest (slightly of course). Its has full kernel support (zd1211rw module) and works with any freak wpa_supplicant.conf config. Comparing Intel to Zydas, Intel had very poor drivers (esp. first ipw3945) and now it has only littler poor drivers for both 3945 and 4965 (iwlwifi).

(If anyone has different opinion about intel, I can give a shell access to my notebook and please stay on my Freeradius network longer than one Gentoo iso download :-)

no can do, see my post at https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-578386-highlight-.html

I use Linksys and Cisco 1242 APs usually.

Find it and buy it. I got one at Sun Microsystems meeting, so now I like them too ;-)

EDIT:
Oh, btw, it also needs firmware (included in Portage) I really don't know a card which don't use it.

richard.scott · Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 10:53 am Post subject:

I have a GIGABYTE GN-WP01GT pci card working very well with the madwifi-ng drivers and hostapd.

It also supports WPA2 and works as an AP perfectly!

d2_racing · Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 2:22 am Post subject:

I use a IPW3945 and everything is perfect.

iarwain · Apprentice Joined: 25 Sep 2003 Posts: 253

Dagger · Retired Dev Joined: 11 Jun 2003 Posts: 765 Location: UK

I've been using Intel4956 for over 6 months now, and I really can't complain. The driver was terrible few months ago, but right now it's quite stable and working well.
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d2_racing · Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 12:54 pm Post subject:

sonaatti · n00b Joined: 09 Jan 2006 Posts: 39

I'm also using Intel4965 and this is yet the best wireless experience I've had, no complaints.

Simba7 · Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 6:30 pm Post subject:

I've used Atheros AR5212 and a Linksys WMP54G (Ralink RT2500) cards and they both run rather decent with an antenna upgrade.

irasnyd · Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 7:33 pm Post subject:

I've been using the built-in ipw3945 on my laptop, and I haven't had any recent problems. The ipw3945 driver (the old one) gave me lots of headaches. The binary daemon just didn't work that well. I'm using the iwlwifi driver now, and I haven't had any problems related to stability or the like.

I did have a problem with the ipw3945 card connecting to a really old Linksys 802.11b-only access point. It would drop the connection constantly. I ended up getting a usb device that worked only with ndiswapper (while trying to find a zydas...). It turns out that Intel has some power saving stuff that all AP's should support, but a few really old ones don't. That AP was the only one I've ever encountered the problem with.

At my school, we only have Cisco AP's. I've never had a problem connecting or staying connected for long periods of time.

I hear zydas makes really good, cheap usb devices, but good luck finding one. I tried, and ended up with a Realtek device that only worked with ndiswrapper, and really sucked.

Januszzz · Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 6:23 pm Post subject: yeah, sure...