Wireless Ethernet hardware (Was: none)

[David Z Maze <dmaze@debian.org>]

Søren Boll Overgaard <dev-null@bombadil.tolkien.dk> writes:

> I've been looking into buying hardware to build a wlan at home, to avoid
> all the annoying cables. However, determining which cards are supported
> (and reasonably easy to get running) with a stock Debian GNU/Linux
> (Unstable) install has proven tricky. Thus, I would very much like some
> input on which cards you are using and to what degree they perform as
> expected. Google hasn't yielded much in the way of help, except that
> D-Link 520 and 650 appear to be working quite well.
> I will eventually be needing both a PCMCIA, a PCI card and an
> access-point, preferably of the same brand.

My experience has been that brand doesn't matter; the only thing you
really care about is that your 802.11b card is based on an Orinoco
chipset, and most of them are.  Wireless Ethernet is, surprisingly, a
case where there's a single predominant standard that everybody uses
in a compatible way.  So I've used both a Dell-brand and an
Enterasys-brand wireless cards with D-Link-brand and Apple-brand
access points with no particular issues.

My current access point at home is a D-Link DWL-900AP, which works
just fine (except that it doesn't have a reset button and I've
forgotten the password for it; if you have any insights on this, I'd
like to know).  There's a range of what features you get with your
wireless.  Mine is just an access point; one end plugs into a wired
network, and it shuffles bits around, that's all.  NAT ("connection
sharing") features are also quite common; people who sell access
points seem to want to sell you the one network-related box you'll
ever need.

-- 
David Maze         dmaze@debian.org      http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell