On Wed, 24 Jul 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am looking to purchase a PCCard WiFI for a notebook and an
> Access Point to connect to a wired network.
> Has anyone any experience of good/bad PCCard and Access Points
> for use under Linux ? I am currently using Mandrake 8.2
Since your using a laptop you'll be missing out on all this PCI -> PCMCIA
bridge hell I'm currently experiencing (albeit under FreeBSD). The same
combination (Agere Orinoco Silver PC Card & Elan P111 adapter) seemed
to work under Red Hat 7.3. Apparently this is a breeze on a laptop.
Orinoco Silver cards cost about #70. But like most they only output 30mW.
For roughly double you can get a Cisco card that does 100mW (legal limit),
also supported under Linux (Open Source & Cisco drivers available).
Depends on what range you need, 30mW may be ample.
Something else to consider is would you ever want to attach an external
antenna to the PC card, if not fine. If you do you need to make sure it
has a socket for an external antenna. And you tend to get cards with two
strengths of WEP encryption, so if security is a priority you may want to
go for the higher. That said WEP is flawed and most people if worried use
SSH, HTTPS or IPsec over WLAN links if paranoid.
For the Access Point the only ones I'd personally consider are listed
here:
http://opensource.instant802.com/hardware.php
But thats just because if I got bored with the APs functionality I could
re-flash it with Linux, which gives you a lot more options. The cost for a
USR 2450 is ~#200 new.
Another (more powerful) option the guys at 'Consume.net' are looking at is
embedded kits from http://www.soekris.com. ~$250 gets you a silent x86
machine with two PCMCIA slots to which you can add your own PC Card
radios.
Of course there are lots of other options, depends on what you need, how
much flexbility you expect and how adventurous your feeling.
Andrew
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