[TriLUG] Proxim RangeLAN-DS 802.11b

[Greg Brown]

I like the Orinoco cards from Lucent (now Agere).  I've had so much fun with 
my PCMCIA cards and AP-500 access point that I can't imagine a time when I 
didn't have these gizmos.  Surfing in the Lazy Boy by the fireplace rocks.

Even though you'll see 802.11b stuff rated at 11 meg one thing to keep in 
mind is that a LOT of that bandwidth is RF overhead so you're really going to 
push about 4-5 meg tops.  That's no big deal really, but when I want to 
transfer anything over a gig (to servers in the house) I plug the laptop into 
the 10/100 switch and let it rip rather than wait for half-duplex 11 minus 
the RF overhead.

Greg



On Thursday 28 February 2002 10:17 am, you wrote:
> Geoff Purdy [geoff.purdy at verizon.net] wrote:
> > I suppose what I'm trying to understand is what makes one 802.11b card
> > better than another:
> > - linux support?
> > - speed?
> > - range?
> > - compatibility? (although I'm assuming that one 802.11b card cannot be
> > more 802.11b compatible than another)
> > - all of the above?
> > - other considerations?
>
> All of the above.  Radio quality varies, which contributes to speed and
> range (as noise increases, speed and range drop - all 802.11b cards kick
> over from 11mb/s to 2mb/s at certain levels of signal).
>
> As for the compatibility, some vendors introduce little tweaks that are
> 'enhancements' to the spec that can only be used with their cards.  Cisco
> has some additional encryption crap they can do (better than WEP).
>
> In the end, the most important is the Linux support.  For some vendors
> there is only binary only drivers, for some none at all.
>
> Mike

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