[GLLUG] Wireless Cards

[Richard Houser]

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STeve Andre' wrote:
| On Monday 04 February 2008 22:32:33 Chick Tower wrote:
|> I'm in the market for a wireless networking PCMCIA card, now that I've
|> gotten my laptop running.  I understand that 802.11g is supposed to
|> handle 54mbps and 802.11b maxes out at 11mbps, but what do people really
|> see for speed at public wireless hotspots?  Is it worth the extra money
|> for an 802.11g card?  I'm going to buy a used one, to save even more
|> money, but I could save a few bucks more on an 802.11b card.
|>
|>                                 Chick
|
| Most wireless systems are horridly run it seems, such that the speed
| difference between and b and g card isn't noticeable.  'a' cards which
| run at 5GHz are definitely faster, but not many places use them.

In theory, A cards can get the same 54Mbps as G, but have a shorter
range and have more trouble propagating through walls.  The only
remaining advantage A cards have is that there are fewer people using
that spectrum, so if you have a LOT of wifi traffic around (like Ted
Dee's), you can avoid some of the clutter.  The downside is that the
equipment is less common, and much more expensive due to lack of scale
(especially on the access point side).  A is much older than G, almost
as old as B.  Unless you have a lot of nearby 2.4Ghz band chatter, I
would expect G to be a little bit faster just due to the longer range at
each speed grade.

| A *lot* of cards are horribly made, too.  Digital companies typically
| do not spend a lot of time on the RF engineering side of things.  The
| two are almost polar opposites, RF and digital; what you want to
| optimize on for one, really isn't what you want for the other.

In the best case, a cardbus/PCMCIA card with integrated antenna won't
work that well due to the small antenna and bad orientation.  Basically,
those cards best receive signals that are perpendicular to the plane of
the antenna.  In a typical laptop, that means directly above, or below,
when signals in reality tend to be received from a mostly horizontal
direction.  If you laptop has an internal antenna, go the mini-PCI route
and you will be a LOT happier.

| Its been a while since I've tried having a shoot-out with wireless
| cards, but the Orinoco Gold card was really heads up better than the
| other cards I played with a few years ago.  I still have one, and just
| recently used it to get a signal at a hotel when other cards weren't
| working.

I had an Orinoco Silver back before the G cards got popular (and decent
drivers).  I never had any problems with it other than those present
with all cardbus cards (antenna issues).

| There is also the political to consider: Atheros isn't exactly forthcoming
| with data on their newest cards.  OpenBSD doesn't really work with
| the AR5212 b/g/a card, because no one has actual specs to figure out
| all the things it does.  Because of this, I'm using a really cheap Ralink
| USB card which actually works pretty well.  The ralink people handed
| out doc and hardware to people for development.  Really cool, and
| they aren't bad.
|
| So the wireless world is something of a mess, with gaps in chipsets
| because the hardware manufacturers think they're better off some
| how in not telling people how their stuff works (sigh).
|
| My advice would be to get a cheap card and see how it runs, or
| perhaps wander around on ebay and find an Orinoco card.  I think
| the prices on cardbus cards have fallen now that all laptops have
| them built in, and USB cards seem to be taking over.
|
| --STeve Andre'
| _______________________________________________
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| linux-user at egr.msu.edu
| http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user

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