Re: Proxim WiFi cards anyone?

[lesha at intercaf.ru]

> : Today I have bought myself new Proxim Orinoco Gold b/g card
> : to replace my old Lucent Orinoco b one.
> :
> : New card is working fine with the ath driver, but...
> : Signal strength and radio perfomance are very nasty.
> :
> : Where my old card gave me signal strength of 106
> : new one gives only 51. (that is 5m away from AP)
> : (same AP, same channels, same everything)
> :
> : It is not working even in next room to the AP.
> :
> : What can be the problem, or just Proxim got lame engineers?
>
> Lame antenna.  Also, the signal strength, as reported by FreeBSD, can
> be radically different when the RF levels are exactly the same.
> Different firmware has different formulas to convert the values that
> are reported.  Also, different antennas have different gains.

No. It seems like antenna is not the problem.
I have tried connecting external one today, same poor perfomance.
But...

When I do run Windowz there are 2 different ways this card behaves.
a) Managed by Windowz WiFi stack:
 - same poor perfomance, disconnections, etc
b) Managed by supplied Proxim's client utility:
 - good link strength, works as it should

Seems like client utility is doing some tweaks on the card
  (switching it's power level may be?)


Actually I have bought myself Buffalo G54 card today.
It is 3 times (!) cheaper then Proxim Orinoco and works perfectly
with NDISualtor (it is Broadcom based):
  device   = 'BCM4306(??) 802.11g Wireless NIC'

Just thought I should warn everyone - do NOT buy crappy Proxim.

Cheers,
      AL.

p.s. Buffalo costs 54 singapore dollards here
 (it is about $32 usd) I should say it is very
 cheap for B/G card!

p.p.s. I was looking for a G card with external connector,
       seems like now I have found one. Tomorrow will go
       buy a pack of them for my friends, to bring with me
       when I will go back to Russia.