[plug] WiFi card question

[Adrian Woodley]

Chris,

Thats a bit of a hard choice. For WPA support it pretty much comes down
to three chipsets:

IPW2100/2200
* Intel chipset.
* 802.11a/g
* Good Linux support with out-of-tree kernel drivers.
* Works well with wpa-supplicant.
* Monitor mode.
* Laptop only.

Prism2/2.5/3
* Hostap driver.
* Full feature set (AP and client, WPA/WPA2/802.11X authenticator and
supplicant)
* Monitor mode.
* 802.11b only (AFAIK)
* In in-tree kernel support.
* Not to be confused with Prism54g chipset.

Atheros
* 802.11a/g
* Monitor mode.
* Supported by Madwifi drivers.
* Madwifi-ng has different API to standard Linux Wifi Extensions - needs
to be carefully matched to wpa-supplicant version.

So really, for 54g stuff you've got a choice between Atheros/Madwifi and
IPW2100/2200, and even then IPW2100/2200 is only supported in laptops
(mini-pci/pccard) AFAIK.

I've had varying success with madwifi, using both the original and "-ng"
versions. On the whole I've found its stability to be lacking and
generally not as good as the Intel chipset.

All that said, there are big changes going on in the Linux Wifi stack
and all this will be changing soon. Software MAC will be intergrated
into most drivers, meaning more chipsets will support WPA/WPA2. This
will also mean a unified Wifi Extensions, so systems like wpa-supplicant
and hostapd will be easier to maintain.

Adrian

On Wed, 2006-07-05 at 15:11 +0800, Chris Griffin wrote:
> Sorry, I guess I assumed that if I was buying new I would go for
> 802.11g. Mainly wanted to get away from WEP due to inherent security
> issues.
> 
> 
> On 7/5/06, garry <garbuck at westnet.com.au> wrote:
> >
> > Might be useful if you say which spec card you want to buy.
> >
> > I still use the Enterasys 802.11b cards, with Mandriva 2k6 they just work.
> >
> > HTH
> >
> > Garry
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Chris Griffin wrote:
> >
> > > Greetings all,
> > >
> > > In light of the fact that such things change at such a rapid rate, I
> > > am looking at upgrading my WiFi cards and of course it is mandatory
> > > that they work flawlessly with Linux (I run, mostly, Fedora). Could
> > > someone please give me some clues as to what to get that, hopefully,
> > > will work out of the box?
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Chris Griffin
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
> > > http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
> > > Committee e-mail: committee at plug.linux.org.au
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
> > http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
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> >
> _______________________________________________
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> http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
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