Annother Wireless network card annother problem

[Doug Barton]

[ Followups set to freebsd-mobile, where this kind of stuff is usually
discussed. ]

I asked this same question recently, and since I said I'd report on my
results I'm a bit overdue. :)

I had several people give unqualified recommendations for Cisco Aironet
cards (350 is the current incarnation), but since my wireless needs are
modest, I decided to go with the other strong recommendation, the netgear
MA-401. When I bought it at Fry's it was on sale, AND had a $10 rebate
(over now, sorry, I got it on the last day).

I had very good experiences with it at both of the conferences that I
attended recently. The wi man page has very good instructions on how to
use it in various circumstances.

In fact, I liked this card so much that I bought the Netgear MA 311
mini-PCI version (which is basically just the same Intersil Prism 2.5 guts
as the 401 glued to a PCI card) so I could set up my little wireless
network at home. The good news is that once I updated the firmware, it was
quite easy to set up hostap mode with this card following the instructions
in wi(4). The bad news is that flashing the firware involved shuffling
cards between boxes so that I could get it in a windows box. AFAIK, there
is no unix firmware flasher.

Following disussion on the -mobile list, I used the Intersil firmware and
Windows flasher available at
http://www.demarctech.com/products/reliawave-rwz/reliawave-rwz-200mw-prism2-5-pcmcia-card.html
I didn't have a lick of trouble updating either card. It all went quite
smoothly. I used the prism25-156.zip version, which as far as I could see
is the latest.

I ended up spending less than $150 for the whole setup, so if you're
looking for a cheap way to play with WiFi, I can definitely recommend this
option.

The other piece of info I thought I should pass on is that a few people
(including the guy at Fry's, who actually had a clue) told me that the
newer linksys products are definitely to be avoided. Apparently they are
having quality control issues in their factory or something, but the guy
at Fry's said he's been getting a ton of returns on linksys lately, but
almost none on the netgear stuff. A couple other people warned me about
the linksys stuff too, but since the price was right on netgear, and since
people had several good things to say about the MA 401, it was an easy
decision.

As for 802.11a, I was told by several people in a position to know that
it's not going to be available in FreeBSD for "a while."

I hope this is useful. Thanks to all those who were kind enough to send me
information, and answer my goofy questions. If I've screwed something up,
or if someone has better info, please feel free.

Doug


On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, vizion communication wrote:

> OK What client cards do work?
> For each of the following:
>
> 802.11a
> 802.11b
>
> Media:
> PCI
> PCMCIA
> USB
>
> OS:
> FreeBSD 4.7

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