College wireless network, need help, what to buy?

[Scrooge2]

Hi, I'm going to NYIT in September and they sent me a letter saying that they just got a new wireless network and that I'll need hardware to use it in my dorm room. Unfortunately I know very little about networking, (I've been on dial-up for most of my life) and really dont know what to buy. What they said they RECCOMEND is the SYMBOL 802.11b wireless LAN card SYMBOL LINK. It's supposed to be around $150. They say it's got strong enough radio frequencies to the server.

Of course this is BS, it's most likely they have an agreement with SYMBOL technologies as one supplies the hardware at lower price and the other advertises to its students to buy their products. Thus I am in the market for one of these 802.11b wireless LAN products. I'm really not sure what to buy, and if there is essentially all that much of a performance difference with these things. Also not sure if there is any other hardware i need to purchase. If anyone can offer a smidgeon of advice for me it would be great. Thanks in advance.

 

[JackMDS]

Conventional Wisdom claims. Orinoco Gold.

Review: ORiNOCO PC Card Gold.

Credible Store: ORINOCO GOLD PCCARD PCMCIA 802.11B CLIENT W/128 BIT ENCRYPTION

 

[jbritt1234]

Do you have a Laptop or Desktop? Don?t even worry about what features/settings it has. They are going to hand you a sheet that has the settings you will need to connect to their network. You won?t have any choice on how it is set up.

I would suggest going out and buying the cheapest thing you can find. Just be sure it is 802.11b compatible. I would suggest Linksys or NetGear. They are both reasonable priced and ok quality. Buy the time you get out of College or move out of the dorms, there will be something better and faster out there to buy.

 

[Soybomb]

Originally posted by: jbritt1234
Do you have a Laptop or Desktop? Don?t even worry about what features/settings it has. They are going to hand you a sheet that has the settings you will need to connect to their network. You won?t have any choice on how it is set up.

I would suggest going out and buying the cheapest thing you can find. Just be sure it is 802.11b compatible. I would suggest Linksys or NetGear. They are both reasonable priced and ok quality. Buy the time you get out of College or move out of the dorms, there will be something better and faster out there to buy.

I disagree with buying the cheapest, that just gets you crap. If you're asking your radio to blast through walls and stuff you want a good quality radio to keep a good signal.

I like orinoco for pcmcia, and haven't played with enough external usb ones to have a preferance

 

[Nighthawk69]

Only one choice: orinoco. Spend the extra money--trust me.

 

[jbritt1234]

That's cool if you disagree... I've used those (NetGear/Linksys) before with no problem. If they have set that dorm up to use wireless, I would seriously doubt that they only have one hub down in the basement or something. They should have wireless hubs in several locations to give a good cover area.

I don?t see another reason to drop another $40 or so on something you won?t see a speed improvement over. It doesn?t matter what the bandwidth is. You are only going to be sharing in Internet connection. Probably use about 200-300 kbps max.

But, if it doesn?t work? Take it back.

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: Nighthawk69
Only one choice: orinoco. Spend the extra money--trust me.

To expand on this, the Orinoco Gold PC Card client I'm using outperformed the D-Link DWL-650 by a factor of 3. I don't recall the exact numbers, but the D-Link client's performance was underwhelming and was not able to keep up with the WAN (cable Internet) throughput. D-Link uses the ubiquitous Intersil Prism2 chipset that most of the manufacturers use, so I'd expect similar lackluster performance from Linksys, SMC, etc. I've read enough reviews stating as much.

Plus I got a great deal on the Orinoco (both clients costing me about the same $$), so being cheap was definitely not the way to go.

 

[rw120555]

I have a Dell c610 latitude laptop with a Dell Truemobile 1150 Series Mini PCI card. Any idea who really makes this, or whether it is considered to be one of the "good" wireless cards? I've thought about buying a 2nd Wap to cover all corners of my house, but maybe I'd be better off buying a better wireless card?

 

[jbritt1234]

Well, we could debate until we are blue in the face about the performance of the card? It all depends on the structure of the building and how good their coverage is. A cheap card will work perfectly if there is a hub somewhere fairly close by. If it is farther or there is interference of some kind in the way, you should go with the Orinoco.

Want some advice? Here you go. Get on the phone. Call the school?s IT department and ask for tech support. Just ask the person who answers what their personal opinion is. If they have had that network set up while students have lived in the building, then they will know if there are problems. If they have had problems with certain cards he is sure to know. I know you said that that they recommend the Symbol but ask if he has heard of any less expensive cards working.

Also, just for the record, I do not normally recommend buying cheap crap. If I was buying it, I would get the best. But, I have just been assuming that, since they told him what to get and he was questioning the price, he was hoping he could spend a little less money (his nickname IS Scrooge 🙂 ). I know when I went of to College, I didn?t have a ton of cash to blow. Plus, the more I could save for beer the better.

And to the last two parts of the original question? Yes, there are performance differences (hence the debate here). Also, no, you should not need any other equipment.

Good luck...

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: rw120555
I have a Dell c610 latitude laptop with a Dell Truemobile 1150 Series Mini PCI card. Any idea who really makes this, or whether it is considered to be one of the "good" wireless cards? I've thought about buying a 2nd Wap to cover all corners of my house, but maybe I'd be better off buying a better wireless card?

That's a "rebadged" Orinoco Gold client, so you have already one of the best. The only difference from the real Orinoco-labeled products is that it's more difficult for you to flash to the latest Orinoco firmware.

Also, my wireless client operates only about 50 feet (if that much) from the access point. The line-of-sight is obstructed, but not by concrete or anything like that. Mainly, my signal quality is limited since I'm not using a USB client with my desktop PC. So from this short of a distance without any particular obstructions, already the Orinoco client vastly overperforms the D-Link client.