[CUWiN-Dev] Cisco cards

[Jim Thompson]

On Feb 10, 2005, at 7:21 PM, 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."

IBSS splits.

> 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?

No idea, but its unlikely that the software attempts to determine the 
OID in the Mac address of the card,
and otherwise, its highly difficult for the card to determine if its 
running against a Cisco/Atheros card
or someone's Atheros card.

So, "likely".

> 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. "

I can think of several things that could cause that, most of them 
fixable or avoidable.

> 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?