[CUWiN-Dev] Cisco cards

[David Young]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 12:23:18AM -0500, Stephen Ronan wrote:
> Hi
> I have a question about wireless card compatibility. The CUWiN
> documentation says that Aironet/Cisco chipsets have problems working
> with the network:
> "...just one Hermes chipset mixed in with other nodes can cause a
> serious network split. Firmware upgrades do not appear to completely
> solve this problem. Aironet/Cisco chipsets have the same problem."
> 
> But in regard to the Atheros chipset, the documentation says that: "This
> is the chipset currently recommended by the CUWiN team. Most tri-mode
> a/b/g cards on the market use the Atheros chipset." I'm hoping that it's
> only the older 802.11b-only Cisco cards that are problematic and not the
> newer a/b/g ones, since I think those do in fact use the Atheros
> chipset, e.g., see: http://www.networkinstruments.com/support/osup1049.html
> So are the Cisco a/b/g cards among those recommended?

Yes, Cisco a/b/g is fine.  It's the chip that really matters.

> By the way, my understanding from one of the MIT Roofnet developers is
> that in regard to loss of throughput at each hop: "We're also
> experimented with 54mbit 802.11g radios and found they actually do worse
> than the 11b radios. "

That's about what I expect.  Makes sense that to operate at the higher
bit rates, 802.11g radios need correspondingly higher S/N ratio.

> Do you have similar experience in regard to that? About how many nodes
> are in the largest current CUWiN installation? And what's the most
> number of hops you see on a regular basis from any nodes?

I lost count.  Sascha?  Three hops on a regular basis.  More when the
testbed is more nearly complete.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung at ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933