wireless 802.11b that works with XP & linux?

[wildwolf]

I've recently purchased a laptop that I wish to provide wireless access to my internal home network. It's a Dell Inspiron 8100 and has the PCMCIA slot available. I currently dual boot the laptop between windows XP Pro and Mandrake 8.1 linux. Does anybody know of a particular wireless pc card that will work with minimal effort on both operating systems, and would I need a specific wireless access point in order to get the card to work under either OS as well?

I've read that the ORiNOCO Gold has great support in both linux & xp, but that's a mighty pricey card. The D-Link DWL-650 supposedly is supported properly in winxp after a driver download, but does anybody have any experience in actually getting it up & running in xp and/or linux?

Thanks for any input.

 

[blstriker]

You could try the orinoco silver which doesn't have the 128 encryption. It can be found for about $75 bucks. It gets awesome signal versus other brands I've tried (dlink, linksys, compaq). You won't be disappointed with orinoco.

 

[drquest]

I agree about the orinoco being the best. I see the silver showing up on ebay a fair amount for reasonable prices.

mrpeabody

 

[manly]

I know WEP isn't a truly secure protocol, but why buy a product limited to 64-bit keys. Isn't that significantly weaker than 128-bit?

I just bought the D-Link DWL-500 (PCI adapter + DWL-650 PC Card). Do I use the downloadable DWL-650 drivers for the PCI adapter under WinXP?

Device Manager shows a DWL-650 but I want to be sure before installing anything.

I think if you can afford it, the Orinoco Gold is probably the best choice; it doesn't seem to be a lot more than the Silver anymore.

I'm currently trying to compile and install Prism2 Linux drivers for my DWL-650 card.

 

[ktwebb]

The Orinco may be the best price/performance card but not the best client card. The Cisco 350 series has all flavors of Windows and Linux support, however you will pay for the performance and range advantage that this card offers over the rest of the bunch. If money is a concern the Orinco gold or silver is probably the right choice for you. If not, get the Cisco card.

 

[Eug]

I've only used the Netgear MA401 in Win 2000, but people said it works fine for XP and Linux drivers are available too.

Gets pretty good range, although probably not as good as the (much more expensive) Cisco stuff.

 

[bsobel]

> I know WEP isn't a truly secure protocol, but why buy a product limited to 64-bit keys. Isn't that significantly weaker than 128-bit?

WEP is broken and shouldn't be relied on if you need the traffic secured. You're better off running without encryption and creating a vpn tunnel over the link.

As for cards, I concur that the Orinco Gold's rock. The drivers are built into XP so it really is plug and play with them.

Bill

 

[wjsulliv]

the DWL-650 by D-Link is suppose dot work under both XP and Linux. I hope so as I intend to use it under both and right now its only $50 at microcenter (see hot deals forum). It is currently working uner XP for me...

As to the PCI adapter card and XP, the drivers are contained within XP to run that, so no driver is necessary, hence why D-Link doesn't provide one.

 

[manly]

<< the DWL-650 by D-Link is suppose dot work under both XP and Linux. I hope so as I intend to use it under both and right now its only $50 at microcenter (see hot deals forum). It is currently working uner XP for me...

As to the PCI adapter card and XP, the drivers are contained within XP to run that, so no driver is necessary, hence why D-Link doesn't provide one. >>



I was thinking the same thing regarding the DWL-500.

After installing the device, it works fine w/ WXP. Before I installed the WXP drivers, the linux-wlan-ng drivers that support this card compiled and loaded successfully (but I hadn't configured them correctly to actually connect to the wireless access point).

After having installed the WXP drivers, every time I try to load the Linux drivers, the Linux OS locks up hard. Can't even ssh in to reboot.

The only logical possibility is that the WXP drivers installed new firmware that the Linux drivers do not currently support (which I still find hard to believe).

At any rate, the signal strength I'm getting in XP is so low that I went ahead and ordered an Orinoco Gold PC Card. I *really* hope it'll work in the D-Link PCI adapter.

I guess I can throw the DWL-650 into a laptop that can roam closer to the WAP, or sell it if necessary.

 

[Eug]

By the way, I don't see what the big deal is about the Orinoco stuff, if my Apple Airport card is any indication. My Apple airport card is supposedly a Lucent/Orinoco card (same chipset) without the antenna, because the Apples have built-in better antennae.

Even with the better antenna, my iBook's range is about the same as my PC laptop was with the Netgear. At most through a thick wall I got 10 ft better range with the iBook. Then again the Netgear had a pretty good rating.

I've only ever tried the DWL-650 very briefly, but never ventured beyond the same coffee shop so I don't know if the range is good or bad. If the DWL-650's range is significantly worse, then it must be truly terrible. But then again you may be right. Tim Higgins' review has it rated pretty poorly for when there are bad signal conditions. I don't know how reproducible these reviews are though.

Nonetheless the DWL-650 for $50 is pretty damn cheap. I didn't realize how cheap these things have gotten. Maybe I should the drop the price on my Netgear in the FS forum.

 

[manly]

I already bought the D-Link DWL-500 (PCI adapter + DWL-650 PC Card).

Am now planning on plugging an Orinoco Gold PC Card into the PCI adapter.

Will this work?

The D-Link DWL-650 hasn't performed well under WXP. The linux-wlan-ng drivers compile, install, and the PCMCIA modules even load under Linux. However, I can't get the device to talk to the WAP.

I believe Orinoco support under Linux is more mature (and the hardware is simply better), so I'd like to try that instead.

 

[MuffD]

I have the D-link 650 card and it works great in Windows XP. Setup was very easy when you install the drive from the D-Link website. I just now have to figure out how to change channels on the card to test range. I know how to do it on my router but that's it. I might actually return this card and just buy an Orinoco Silver card.

 

[Drakkhen]

I know alot of people don't think of it as a great solution, but my Linksys WPC11 works great under XP and Mandrake on a dual boot Dell C600 with 128-bit encryption enabled.

Not a whole lot of effort required, either.

 

[manly]

Finally got the open-source orinoco_cs driver to work with the D-Link DWL-650 in Linux 2.4.16. Didn't have luck with linux-wlan-ng drivers that are designed for the Prism2 devices.

Am getting roughly 26/92 signal strength, which is disappointing. Recent Linux kernels include the orinoco_cs drivers. In my case, it all finally worked after enabling the kernel's built-in yenta-socket PCMCIA driver instead of the older external driver. With the older external driver, the orinoco_cs module wouldn't load into the kernel (although all the other modules did).

A quick throughput test (using ZModem over ssh) yielded 500 Kbps with 128-bit WEP; it's less than 10% slower than without WEP, which is relatively negligible.

500 Kbps is pretty disappointing though; I was expecting more along the lines of 2 Mbps.

The only hitch is that out-of-the-box, having dhcpcd grab a dynamic address for two interfaces (Ethernet and 802.11b) doesn't work. If I run the second dhcpcd manually, it seems to work. I just configured one of the interfaces statically (and might eventually remove the wired interface completely).

edit:

Am still looking for a gratis IPsec-based VPN for Windows to go along with freeswan for Linux.

Also wondering when other WiFi manufacturers will implement Lucent/Agere's recently developed WEPplus enhancement.