Re: [iPAQ] Wireless-Lan-Card

On Wed, Jun 05 '02 at 16:52, jonathan chetwynd wrote:
> orinoco is well supported,
but expensive

cisco aironets are more expensive, not as good supported (e.g. smaler
user base) but have the better driver (better under heavy treffic and
the stock driver is able to do sniffing)

prism2 based cards are signivicantely cheeper, but the quality varies
widely. The current driver supports sniffing and Host AP (emulated base
station) mode, but you should either be willing to do some experiments
or be able to return your card, as it might not work out of the box)

If you want to do sniffing:
- orinoco has the most wide spread connector (you get antennas
  everywhere) and there appears to be a patch to allow sniffing with
  linux. (they have a very good software for Windows i386)
- the aironet cards have the best driver for wirless sniffing, the old
  (pre cisco) models come with removeable antenna, or you can get
  special models with out antenna. But the connector is not very popular
- the prism2 host AP driver appears to be quite useable for sniffing (if
  it works with your card, I've a D-Link DLW-650 (IIRC, it's at home)
  and it works) and some cards (e.g. the DWL-650 or some SMC) have
  soldering points for antenna cables

If you want long distance:
- the regular orinocos have 60mW transimssion power, there are so called
  "red cap" cards with only 20mW (IIRC) for FCC approved usage with high
  gain antennas (e.g. yagies)
- the aironets are available with 60mW (called 340) or 100mW (called
  350) and you can use the driver to change the transmission power. The
  350 have better rx antennas too.
- the transimssion power of prism2 cards varies widely but tops as 60mW
  as the transmission unit is only capable of this. Most will have
  less, but I was not able to find as much documentation as I wanted to.
  the rx antennas are mostly cheep copper lines on the PCB board.

Any questions? :-)
    Goetz.
Received on Wed Jun 05 17:00:49 2002