[TriLUG] wireless question (again).

[gregbrown at mindspring.com]

I am running wireless at my house in a Linux/Windows enviornment, but not a pure Linux env. like you seem to be looking at.

One thing to keep in mind is if you have a home client/server network already running it may be beneficial to have a dedicated 10/100 switch somewhere in the mix.  Wireless is great, but it is slow.  It is half duplex and shared hence if you want to do any high-speed data transfers you will quickly want a good 'ol cat 5 cable to a 100 meg port.  Even though wireless 802.11b is rated at 11 meg in reality 7 meg of that is RF overhead so you're really dealing with only 4 meg of usable throughput - and you will notice significant degredation of service once you reach greater that 50% utilization.

The wireless hardware that I prefer is the Orinoco stuff (http://www.orinocowireless.com).  I use two Orinoco silver cards in the laptops which connect through a Orinoco AP-500 access point up in my bonus room (the AP-500 is really just a Orinoco Gold card inside a case connected to a small board).  

The ranges I have connceted using the Orinoco stuff is impressive and so far I have had no problems at all with my setup.  Here is a basic picture of my home network as it exists today:
http://www.gregorybrown.com/greg/home-net/home-net-feb2002.jpg

My second Linux box should be in the mix as early as Thursday. ;)  But that Linux box will be hard-wired to my Bay 310T switch in my bonux room.  Perhaps if I had another laptop to load linux on I'd try the wireless on the laptop.

Oh, I just checked the Orinoco page for the Gold/Silver cards and it says it supports Linux (kernel versions 2.0.x to 2.2.x, 2.4) as well as a bunch of other OSes.  
Greg


trilug at trilug.org wrote:
> Who knows *somebody* that running wireless with linux?

What hardware do *they* use?

Is Linksys a good choice?

Some web pages say support is still beta ( prism2
pccards), other say it works great. (linux-wlan, amazon,
hpl.hp.com, etc)

What wireless router/basestation have the best range?  best Wep
under linux?

thanks


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