Re: Debian Wireless Networks
On Tue, Nov 29, 2005 at 07:23:53PM -0500, Leonid Grinberg wrote:
> Ok, thank you. Judging from the commands that you just told me, I take
> it you are trying to find the wireless card type. Am I right?
>
That's right. Any or all of the above can be useful to try and identify
the type of card - without having to open the computer case :)
How best to put this: wireless cards are problematic. They are bound
by all sorts of (different) rules and regulations in each country, they
are a high volume popular item, need to be relatively cheap and robust.
The rules and regulations mean, for example, that a "Japanese" card
for the Japanese markets has fewer channels/higher power than an
"American" card. Since all the cards are made in places like
Taiwan/China and are essentially identical for each market, the defining
factor is software on the card. This "firmware" is usually a blob of
binary code and may also be tied up with the software drivers which
come with the card (which are usually MS Windows only).
The fact that the cards are in high volume production means that
you can't rely on getting the same chips on your card this month as
last. Chip revisions and firmware levels change rapidly: one
manufacturer made one card with two different versions of chipsets -
one worked well and one didn't - so you needed to know whether your card
had been made in Taiwan or the PRC. Manufacturers have also been known
to release multiple versions of a wireless card with different chipsets
under the same model number :(
The fact that they are cheap (and getting cheaper in volume) means that
there is little time for quality control or device design: if it's
cheaper to do it in the software blob (where we can't see the internals)
it'll be done that way. Manufacturers won't release their specs. and so
some of the Linux device driver work is guesswork. A few cards will
never be supported in the kernel so you must use Windows drivers and
ndiswrapper.
For Intel cards and chipsets, the future looks bright. Intel will
now support Debian. Support for the latest Centrino chipsets is in
the latest kernels - all I had to do was to download firmware and place
it in a /etc/firmware and it "just worked". Support for TI's ACX111
is less good - you have to build code/kernel modules
> In general, do you think that it is a package that Debian has that is
> not installed, a module that is not loaded (in /etc/modules), or a
> module not installed?
>
Probably not the right module - but you need to be absolutely sure of
your card first :)
> Leonid
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