Re: [9fans] Wireless lan cards for the bitsy.

[nigel@9fs.org]

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Not quite.  It depends what encryption you want.  A lot of the cheap
base stations are only 64 bit, or at least they are by the time they
are neutered and delivered to across the pond.  I've seen both 128 and
64 bit quoted for the D-Link.  It's also not always clear whether the
base stations fall back from 128 to 64 in the presence of a 64 bit
client (e.g.  ORiNOCO siliver pc card).

Note also that whilst for a residential gateway you want one which
does DHCP and NAT, some do this even if you have the access point
(i.e.  ethernet) version.  There are reasons for this emanating from
Seattle, so it's worth looking out for as you might wish to avoid the
limitations of NAT.

As for which pc card to buy, there are many which are straight wavelan
rebadges.  There are also a lot which use the Prism2 silicon, not the
Hermes (wavelan) silicon/firmware.  Whilst these are clealy related,
there are a few hacks needs to support Prism2, which the Plan 9 driver
does not have.

How do you tell? Well the following URL points to the FreeBSD pccard
catalogue, or at least the revision history for it. It changes very fast at
the moment, so choose the tip revision (1.98.2.22 at time of writing).

http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/etc/defaults/pccard.conf

In the file there is a section entitled

########## wi ##########

in which all the Prism2 and Hermes cards are listed. There is a quite
detailed product name, and a config line. If the config line ends
0x10000 its a Prism2 card. Don't buy it, or better, buy it, fix the
driver, and post it.

Nigel


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From: "David P. Boswell" <dave@daves.net>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu, sam@ducksworth.com
Subject: Re: [9fans] Wireless lan cards for the bitsy.
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 19:23:14 -0600 (MDT)
Message-ID: <20010611.192314.74724354.daveb@daves.net>



I am using a D-Link DWL-1000AP.  $250 at the local store.  Any 802.11B
access point should work fine.

From: Sam Ducksworth <sam@ducksworth.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Wireless lan cards for the bitsy.
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 13:56:04 -0700 (PDT)

> On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Dan Cross wrote:
> 
> > I used the ORiNOCO card in mine (even though the card still says
> > Lucent Wavelan on it).  It's the only supported wireless LAN card
> > that I know of
> 
> what are you using for your gateway? (i.e. ORiNOCO Residential
> Gateway RG1000 )
> 
> >
> > 	- Dan C.
> >
> >
> 
> --sam
>