Ajar, On transmit, range and power are directly proportional to each other - the more transmit range, the more power is required from your batteries and the shorter the battery life. On receive, the better the receive sensitivity (for example, a receiver threshold of -90 dBm is better - more sensitive - than a threshold of -85 dBm) the better the receive range. Overall, your choice of antenna (assuming an external antenna) has the biggest effect on your communications distance. The antenna determines where your available transmit power is focused and also the direction that the greatest incoming (received) signal is picked up from.
jack Ajai Khattri wrote: > Does anyone know of a site or similar resource that compares and contrasts > wireless hardware? > > More specifically, I am running NetBSD on a handheld, which only supports a > handful (excuse pun ;-) of wireless NIC cards. I am looking for a wireless > card that has excellent range but low power enough so it doesn't eat my > batteries for breakfast ;-) > > Here's the PCMCIA network hardware supported by NetBSD: > > Aironet 4500/4800 and Cisco 340 series wireless network (an) > BayStack 650 IEEE 802.11FH wireless network card (awi) > Netwave AirSurfer wireless network card (cnw) > 3Com 3c562, 3c574 and 3c589 family (ep) > Fujitsu MB86960-based cards, including the TDK CD021BX (mbe) > NE2000 compatibles (ne) > Raytheon Raylink / WebGear Aviator IEEE 802.11 2Mbps Wireless (ray) > SMC91c9x-based cards, including Megahertz X-Jack (sm) > AT&T/Lucent WaveLan wireless PCMCIA card (wi) > Intersil PRISM WaveLan wireless PCMCIA card (wi) > Xircom CreditCard PCMCIA Ethernet (xi) > IBM and 3Com Tropic-based Token Ring cards (tr) > > (This list is at http://www.netbsd.org/Hardware/pcmcia.html) -- Jack Unger, President-Wireless InfoNet ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 818 227-4220 Vendor-Neutral WISP Training - http://www.ask-wi.com/2002workshops.html Author - "Deploying License-Free Wireless WANs" http://www.ask-wi.com/book.html -- NYCwireless - http://www.nycwireless.net/ Un/Subscribe: http://lists.nycwireless.net/mailman/listinfo/nycwireless/ Archives: http://lists.nycwireless.net/pipermail/nycwireless/
