Good 802.11g (b/g) PCMCIA card for laptop?

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upgrdman · Post by **upgrdman** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 9:16 am

I just got a nice laptop, which seems to have really good linux support. Its a 2GHz celeron box, which will soon have a gig of ram. Anyway...

I am looking into going out and buying a good PCMCIA card (thats what those cards are called that go into laptop slots right? like 2 or 3 inches wide...) for wireless networking. Can anyone reccomend a good one, prefereably with good open-source drivers, or if not, at least good closed source drivers.

Here's my goal: at home I have a main computer with dual gigabit ethernet. I'm thinking of using one of those ports to help me talk with my laptop wirelessly. This probably also means setting up linux to bridge my wireless network, with my wired LAN which is what my other gigabit ethernet port it using. I get Internet access throught that wired network connection, which I would like to share with my laptop.

What do I need? I don't know much about wireless networks... Do I need an Access Point? or some sort of wireless router? I have no idea was an AP is, but I hear it a lot in talks of 802.11b/g.

I would of course also like to be able to take advange of WiFi on the road... like when I'm at a place that offers free WiFi access like my college, Starbucks, etc.

Lastly, but most importantly, I would like a PCMCIA card that supports external antennas. I might look into using a nice antenna like the Cantenna I saw at ThinkGeek...It just a commercial version of the Pringles-can antenna

...so of couse I would need a card that allows me to connect external antennas. But... does anyone know if a card that allows external antenna can also have a simple internal antenna, for the times when I dont need to use an external antenna, like when I'm at home.

Also, if I want to do the semi-long-range access with those Cantenna antennas, I assume I would also need a Cantenna for my wireless AP/router/whatever it's called... do most AP's/whatever support external antennas? Can you reccomend a good one? And do these Access Points, or whatever they're called, need special linux drivers... or do they just convert the wireless signal into normal ethernet packets, etc? I ask because my main computer is an AMD64, in 64bit mode...so I would need 64 bit drivers for the AP/whatever if it needs drivers.

Sorry, long post.

Thanks,
--Farrell F.

UberLord · Post by **UberLord** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 9:56 am

You would be needing an atheros based card then (mainly as I've lost all faith in prism54). A good card would be the WG511 - make sure it's a v2 as the v1 is prism based.

Note - I do use a prism54 card in my laptop, but I cannot get wpa working and afaik development of this driver has kinda stopped.

upgrdman · Post by **upgrdman** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 1:36 pm

where can i get the v2 cards? all i see are the prism based one. and also, do they support external antennas? that is important for me.. and looks at the pictures i dont see where an antenna would plugin in. maybe its just the angles i see on the various web sites i google'd through.

thanks,
--farrell f.

and again, is an "access point" what i need, so i can connect my laptop to either my second gigabit etherenet port on my main computer, or my hub.?

UberLord · Post by **UberLord** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 2:04 pm

You would need an Access Point - and you don't need any special drivers. You can plug it into your hub. Most AP's have DHCP servers - or if you run one on your server you can use that instead.

Sorry - I didn't see the bit about the antenna. I don't know of any off hand