Questions about 802.11b Wireless networking

[kingofslack]

I'm trying to figure out whether the wireless PCMCIA NICs I'm shopping for will work with any access point, or only with one of the same brand. Does anyone know?

Thanks
slack on...

 

[JMF]

The 3Com products will work with most any other brand but as for the others --- probably not. I saw on the 3Com site they are coming out with full BLUETOOTH products during the summer of 2001 - I would wait for those!

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YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!!!!!!!!

 

[Shadow07]

We are currently doing a review of Tier 2 vendor wireless products. What products are you looking at?

With the 802.11b standard, all maanufacturers should work with each other from a basic level (ie. no encryption).

 

[Shadow07]

We are currently doing a review of Tier 2 vendor wireless products. What products are you looking at?

With the 802.11b standard, all maanufacturers should work with each other from a basic level (ie. no encryption).

Check out our site, as we have written some articles pertaining to wireless and the wireless standards.

 

[ktwebb]

Put 802.11b equipment in for a living. So far, I have not seen any 802.11b product that will not talk to another vendors product using the spec. That is the why it is a standard. In theory they should all talk. Having said that, I havent used them all, but quite a few testing various solutions. For the home, I really like the SMC barricade. The one with the 4 port switch does NAT and has a built in print server which is a nice touch. We sell the Cisco/Aironet product for LAN's and WAN's and a proprietary solutions called the WMUX tsunami line for higher speed WAN solutions. Much too expensive for home consumers but full duplex. WAN solution only though, no AP that I am aware of. The linksys wireless has also tested well for LAN's, but it is hard to find them. The Barricade is 50mw vs 30 from most vendors although there range is about equal to the Cisco and Linksys 30 mw product. If it were me, I would get the SMC barricade AP and the least expensive client cards I could find.

 

[kingofslack]

You guys rock, thanks for the info.
I have seen the Linksys AP at Compusa, but they are charging full retail. Upon reading your replies I realized that the 802.x specs were implemented to ensure a uniform standards system for networking, and that everything has to talk to each other based on those specifications. All the stuff that I learned in Networking Essentials that was clouded with beer hops and bong resin I guess. Thanks again,
Slack

 

[Eug]

<< The 3Com products will work with most any other brand but as for the others --- probably not. >>

Well, that would defeat the purpose of 802.11b. From most reports out there, the cards work pretty much interchangeably.


<< I saw on the 3Com site they are coming out with full BLUETOOTH products during the summer of 2001 - I would wait for those! >>

I wouldn't. Bluetooth is not a home networking technology like the others. It only has range of a few metres. Personally I would AVOID bluetooth like the plague if you're thinking about 802.11b at all, unless they can prove to us that it doesn't interfere with 802.11b's reliability and speed.

 

[Shadow07]

EUG is right. Bluetooth is not a home wireless protocol/solution (god I hate using the work solution). It is mainly used for communication between multiple devices that use a none proprietary protocol to exchange data.

But the main problem with 3COM's wireless products is that at the most basic level they will work with any other vendor's Access Point out there. But if you want to encrypt (with 128-bit and not the WEP standard 56-bit encryption) the traffic, you will need to use their AP and their client software that does the 128-bit encryption that will not work with other AP's. But then again that is the biggest problem with most vendors today. Check out my article on Wireless Security and let me know what you think.