Which wireless card?

[Ian Malone]

Sasa Stupar:

 > Jay Lee wrote:
 >> Sasa Stupar wrote:
 >>
 >
 >>> I am thinking to move my server (FC3) from the office room to a
 >>> basement and to connect it via wireless network. I am just wondering
 >>> which PCI cards (or USB) works well under FC3 and are not very
 >>> complicated to setup? I have a Netgear wi-fi router WGT624GR.
 >
 >>
 >>
 >> I really wouldn't suggest this.  Wireless is great but at it's best
 >> it's not going to be as reliable and fast as good ol' CAT5.  At it's
 >> worst, you'll get dropped server connections, poor performance, data
 >> corruption, lots of bad things.  Put your wireless AP|router in the
 >> basement and the server right next to it, connection via CAT5.  As
 >> far as card recommendations, Atheros based chips work pretty well
 >> with the madwifi driver.
 >>

 > I can't move my router into basement since I don't have a line there
 > so that's why I wanted to use wireless. I really don't need speed of
 > CAT5 (100Mbit) but this router can manage up to 108 Mbit link (if you
 > are close enough) and my distance will be 10 meters with two brick
 > walls so I think it shouldn't drop link to less than 54 Mbit.
 > Atheros based chips - well if I by card over internet I really don't
 > know if it has this kind of chips since this is not advertised in the
 > selling leaflet.

Most cards can be found at:
<http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/HardwareComparison>

In addition, googling on card makes is often a good way to find out
the chipset (and sometimes the manufacturer's website will even tell
you).

This is a short overview:
<http://users.linpro.no/janl/hardware/wifi.html>

For the record I'm using an Edimax 7128g (PCI). It's not on that list,
but it is based on a Ralink rt2500 chipset.  I suspect the driver of
causing occassional freezes, but generally it works well.  I would
echo comments about dropped connections though, since I've found two
Belkin F5D7132UK4 802.11g router/modems with a tendency to give up
(with other wireless cards and OSes too).  I haven't used any other
make of access point yet, but I get the impression most have their
issues from time to time.

-- 
imalone