[CUWiN] Good Wireless card for nodes?

[David Young]

On Wed, Aug 18, 2004 at 04:52:11PM -0500, Shankar Rao wrote:
> Hello I am interested in setting up three nodes around town. I believe  
> all of these locations are within range of other nodes.
> 
> location #1: 311 W. High St.

Is that the corner of High & McCullough?

> location #3: Broadway, between Washington and Nevada

That is a stone's throw from my place.

> I'm looking to buy the proper equipment for all of these places. Is  
> there a certain type of PCI wireless card I should get? I figure that I  
> probably don't need an 802.11g card, but I would want one with decent  
> Unix support (since the node software uses NetBSD).
> 
> Here are a couple candidates:
> 
> Belkin PCI 802.11b
> http://www.staples.com/Catalog/Browse/sku.asp? 
> PageType=1&Sku=497237&bcFlag=True&bcSCatId=3&bcSCatName=Technology&bcCat 
> Id=58&bcCatName=Networking&bcDeptId=1806&bcDeptName=Wireless%2D+B+%28802 
> %2E11b%29&bcClassId=141713&bcClassName=Wireless%2DB+Cards+%26+Adapters+% 
> 28Desktops%29
> 
> D-Link PCI 802.11b
> http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do? 
> level=SK&id=835939&location_info=SG_3_DV_18_SC_1803011_SK_835939
> 
> Linksys PCI 802.11g
> http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp? 
> product_code=292350&pfp=cat1&tabtype=rb
> 
> 
> I'm leaning toward the D-Link, because it seems to strike a good  
> balance between price and driver support.

This is where things get *really* confusing.  There are several revisions
of the D-Link.  See <http://www.dlink.com/products/support.asp?pid=42>.
We support revisions A and B, but they are obsolete---I don't even
know if you can buy them (new) in the U.S.!  Revisions C and D have the
ADMtek chip, which *is* supported.  I will add support for revision E
if somebody will buy me one.

Some (all?) of the D-Link cards require a 3.3V PCI 2.2 bus, only.
I know from experience that many old PCs have a 5V PCI 2.0 or PCI 2.1 bus.

D-Link advertises the fact that the DWL-G520 has an Atheros chip on it.
Our support for Atheros is stabilizing, so Atheros chips are worth a try.

The Linksys .11g card probably contains the Broadcom chip, which is
*not* supported.

We support Version 1 and Version 2101 of the Belkin card.

For this e-mail, I have used this great reference,
<http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/Client_5fAdapters_5f802_5f11b>.

> Does anyone know any good places to purchases antennae for these nodes?

hyperlinktech.com is where we buy antennas.  Other places are netgate.com,
netnimble.net, and ecommwireless.com.

Dave

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