| 1 |
On 18 Feb 2007, at 23:19, Mick wrote: |
| 2 |
> ... I am trying to |
| 3 |
> find out which WiFi cardbus to buy for my laptop. I didn't have |
| 4 |
> much joy |
| 5 |
> with a Belkin and would like to get a card which has a chipset that is |
| 6 |
> supported well in Linux. |
| 7 |
> |
| 8 |
> Which chipsets have the more mature drivers? |
| 9 |
|
| 10 |
You don't state which model of Belkin you tried, but I can assure you |
| 11 |
that they do a "set" (USB, cardbus, PCI) of 802.11g cards that are |
| 12 |
excellently supported by the rt2500 drivers. These are excellent, are |
| 13 |
OSS & you can get them with `emerge rt2500`. |
| 14 |
|
| 15 |
I've also used cards which use the prism54 & madwifi drivers, which |
| 16 |
both do "master mode" (for building a wireless access point or base- |
| 17 |
station under Linux) and are both excellent. Jean Tourrilhes' page at |
| 18 |
HP.com is quite up-to-date on the situation with the prism54 drivers, |
| 19 |
I think, and I've never seen a cardbus card using this chipset, |
| 20 |
anyway, but if you can get hold of a card that's well supported by |
| 21 |
prism54 then it's very easy to use and the driver is in the main |
| 22 |
kernel tree. |
| 23 |
|
| 24 |
The Atheros chipset supported by madwifi is capable of doing 802.11a |
| 25 |
as well as b & g - not all cards do "a", but they're not too |
| 26 |
difficult to find. madwifi-ng is a little non-standard in the way you |
| 27 |
configure the card (so I guess it might not work so well with |
| 28 |
graphical wireless configuration utilities) but it offers some more |
| 29 |
advanced features (VAPs, or "virtual access-points" in master-mode, |
| 30 |
for instance, allow you to have WEP & unencrypted interfaces on the |
| 31 |
same card; hence with iptables you can set different firewall rules |
| 32 |
for ath0 & ath1). |
| 33 |
|
| 34 |
<http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware> |
| 35 |
<http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility> |
| 36 |
<http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/ |
| 37 |
Linux.Wireless.drivers.802.11ag.html#Prism54> |
| 38 |
|
| 39 |
I recommend this card, but if you're outside the UK contact in |
| 40 |
advance regarding shipping: |
| 41 |
<http://networkned.co.uk/Belkin_Cardbus.php> |
| 42 |
FULL DISCLOSURE: I am involved with this supplier. |
| 43 |
|
| 44 |
Stroller. |
| 45 |
|
| 46 |
-- |
| 47 |
gentoo-user@g.o mailing list |
Archives