[SOLVED] new WLAN card - need RELIABILITY!

Havin_it · Last edited by Havin_it on Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:59 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hello,

So... I've been gamely trying to save my old wifi card from the scrapheap (see here for the blow-by-blow), but it doesn't look like I'll get any joy within the short term, so I now have to look for a new card.

I guess this is often said, but I've just about lost the rag with the joys of Linux wireless. I have 2 cards right now, both are supposed to work, neither do. I do *not* want to buy another futuristic paperweight.

WRT form-factor, I'll go for either Cardbus or USB, though being a notebook, the USB would preferably be as small (narrow) as possible. I even have a vacant MiniPCI slot, though from what I've read there can be all sorts of misery at the BIOS level with these things, so maybe that's not a good idea. (Feel free to re-educate me on that last point if you wish.)

As the whole wireless stack is being overhauled, it seems I should aim for a card that will fit in with the new framework (mac80211). From the linuxwireless web page, there seem to be two drivers that work at the moment: b43 for Broadcom cards (except mine, apparently

), and zd1211rw for Zydas/Atheros cards.

I had a look for Zydas-based cards, and this looked quite fun:
ZyXEL ZyAIR AG-225H especially interesting that it's capable of Master mode, though who knows when that'll be supported by the Linux driver :roll:

I would love a card that would reliably function as an AP, but I've not seen such a thing in a Cardbus or USB (Dongle) form-factor... have you?

I guess there is a lot here, but please do chip in on any or all of the above if you have any authoritative info to share. I'm desperately sick of this merry-go-round and can't afford to make a bad choice.

UberLord · Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:23 pm Post subject:

rt2500 based cards require no firmware blobs and the rt2x00 driver to support them is now in the 2.6.24 kernel. It uses the new wireless stack too

I've been using it on my amd64 to great effect!
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Havin_it · Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:58 pm Post subject:

Uberlord, thanks very much for the tip. Funnily enough I used to have a Ralink-based card (Belkin F5D7050) that came with my old AP, but never even used it on Linux (the Belkin/bcm4306 card was pretty bomb-proof back then ... sniff). I gave it away to an acquaintance who couldn't (at the time) find any card with a WinXP x64 driver

From the rt2x00 list of products, this'n looks like the best bet. Supports ad-hoc (I need that too, occasionally) and darnit, if they actually cite Linux support on their website, they get my vote

Very cheap to buy too, which does no harm :twisted:

EDIT: The device is listed twice: once under rt2500 (not currently using new mac80211 it appears, and presumably for the chop in future) and once under rt61pci (using mac80211 -- Uberlord I assume this is the driver you're using -- but not yet supporting ad-hoc).

So perhaps there remains a worry: If I have to use a legacy driver to get some functionality, and there's no guarantee that the mac80211 effort will provide it in future (ad-hoc seems to be of very little interest to hackers), then I'll potentially be in more or less the situation I'm now in with the Belkin card. Am I wrong? Maybe I'm misinterpreting the info...

UberLord · Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 4:30 pm Post subject:

The rt2x00 driver supports all rt2500 cards and upwards, including the rt60 and rt70 class cards.
The rt2x00 driver uses the new stack, but does not support ad-hoc mode in the current kernel. I think the next kernel may support it, as I think the rt2x00 git repo does.

The rt2500 driver (as done by ralink and then community supported) and cousins are for specific cards and use the old stack.
_________________
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Use dhcpcd-ui (GTK+/Qt) as your System Tray Network tool

Havin_it · Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 5:42 pm Post subject:

Hmm... Ad-hoc is also supported by b43 though

forgive me for being a tad bit cynical about "what will work soon"... I was told my worries would be over when b43 came along.

I guess if the rt2x00 is building on the OSS driver Ralink themselves released, the chances of ad-hoc being done are a bit better. And rt2500 won't be EOL'd from the kernel anytime soon, will it?

Since I posted this I've been looking into the possibilities for master mode cards, and that looks pretty much like a non-starter. There are some old 802.11b Prism2.5 PCMCIA cards on eBay, but because of their age they have no support for WPA. (This was the main reason I wanted a hostap card: side-step the ad-hoc mess and get better grade encryption acting as a master for my spare station-mode-only card which I could use with foreign machines.)

I guess laptops are not meant to be APs, as far as mfrs. are concerned anyway

UberLord · Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 5:45 pm Post subject:

No, the rt2x00 driver is a total re-write as they deemed the source code to nasty.
And the driver just got into the kernel, so I hope it stays there

There is zero change of the rt2500 driver (ie the ralink one) ever entering the kernel due to said coding style nastyness.
_________________
Use dhcpcd for all your automated network configuration needs
Use dhcpcd-ui (GTK+/Qt) as your System Tray Network tool

MorpheuS.Ibis · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 22 Apr 2006 Posts: 143

I am using two atheros miniPCI cards and both work great. one is WNC CM9 in my gentoo homeserver (using PCI-miniPCI bridge), the other one is R52 in mikrotik rb192 (linux-2.6.2x based OS). on linux, i use madwifi-ng semi-proprietary driver, but it works great as AP with hostapd for WPA.
I would recommend taking one of those cards.

about the BIOS problems - I have not seen any, but I have not tried enough computers to be sure

Havin_it · Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 7:54 pm Post subject:

That might be something to look at... I'd want to be *very* sure before trying a MiniPCI card, but I can do my own research on that. I've only looked briefly at MadWifi -- being a proprietary system doesn't bother me as long as it works, but I read it uses a proprietary HAL - does this mean it completely replaces sys-apps/hal?

Also, is there a list anywhere of consumer Atheros-based cards that will do Master mode? Or which chipsets support it (from there I can comb the MadWifi site)?

Monkeh · Veteran Joined: 06 Aug 2005 Posts: 1656 Location: England

UberLord · Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 11:47 pm Post subject:

Monkeh · Veteran Joined: 06 Aug 2005 Posts: 1656 Location: England

MorpheuS.Ibis · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 22 Apr 2006 Posts: 143

UberLord · Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:35 am Post subject:

Monkeh · Veteran Joined: 06 Aug 2005 Posts: 1656 Location: England

Havin_it · Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:49 pm Post subject:

Thanks all for the info. I decided to go for one of these:

http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility/Netgear#WPN511

The comments are all positive, and I haven't found much negative at all in my Google-trawling (and the vendor/sub-brand are the same as my AP). Not the route I thought I'd go, but all sounds promising.

I found someone asking about suitable MiniPCI cards for my model on the Toshiba forums -- geez, those guys are the biggest scaremongers ever when it comes to hardware advice! -- and found a couple of options (both Atheros), but they are rare and expensive (a UK company quoted me over 100 quid!). Shame, I liked the idea of an internal device, but not at that price and with that level of paranoia.

Thanks again!