I would suggest you look carefully at whichever wireless card you might consider. I have the LinkSys WPC-11 PCMCIA card in my laptop. I bought this card when it first came on the market. It has relatively poor range. There are newer versions of this same card. I've seen them with stickers that say "v2.5" or "v3.0". I've read that these newer versions have improved electronics and antenna circuitry. One card that gets excellent reviews (and has the nice attribute of being a bit less expensive) is the NetGear MA401 card. By all accounts the Orinco cards are supposed to deliver the best range. Note that there are two models - a silver model that supports WEP 64 bit encryption and a Gold model that supports 128 bit encruption.
I saw one magazine article that found that most of the folks running wireless setups had WEP turned off. Worse, they left the ESSID field at the default value which would be "linksys" for Linksys products and "compaq" for Compaq products etc.. Even though WEP is considered a very weak standard, it's better than nothing. Other security suggestions I've seen - try to orient the antennae on the wireless access point to limit coverage to the inside of your house. That may not be all that effective but it's worth a shot. In order for someone to break down your WEP security, they need to capture an hour or more of your traffic. Assuming you aren't actually using your laptop (or other wireless devices like wireless PDAs) you should be reasonably secure with an altered ESSID and 128 bit WEP turned on. -Alex Wirth's Law: Software gets slower faster than Hardware gets faster! "On the side of the software box, in the 'System Requirements' section, it said 'Requires Windows 95 or better'. So I installed Linux." - Anonymous The closest I'm going to get to retirement is when I put new Michelins on my car! On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Ben Boulanger wrote: > I'm having success doing just that with the Linksys wireless router and a > wireless card w/my work laptop when I bring it home. I have the linksys > BEFW11 (or something like that.. it's the 4 port broadband router with > wireless) and I use a linksys wireless card (though I don't believe you're > locked into linksys's wireless card - any 802.11b will work). > > Ben > > On 23 Apr 2002, R. Sean Hartnett wrote: > > > Would anyone be able to recommend any wireless equipment? > > > > What I am thinking of doing is taking my current AT&T broadband feed > > that then runs into a Linksys Broadband router and then to my little > > network of PCs and somehow introduce the ability to connect another PC > > through a wireless connection. > > Also, if anyone has any other ideas I would also be willing to look into > > as well. > > > > This other PC, to be convenient, needs to be located away from my little > > setup, and I do not wish to run that long cable, it would not be easy to > > accomplish. > > > > I also would like the solution to be platform neutral. > > > > > > Thanks > > Sean > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ***************************************************************** > > To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. > > ***************************************************************** > > > > -- > > Shed no tears until seeing the coffin. > > > ***************************************************************** > To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. > ***************************************************************** > > ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
