At the request of Spidey, I am posting a quick FAQ on wireless clients. As a quick background, I do CCX (cisco compatible extensions) cert testing. Cisco CCX
First, I would establish what (imho) are the big 3 chip makers in the wireless business. Those are Atheros, Broadcom, and Intel. Each of these have multiple chips they use, but most have 2-3 active products. You should take note that when looking at these, there are sometimes even 2 cards with the same product, but are "dual band", meaning 5 Ghz (802.11A) and 2.4 Ghz (802.11B/G). An example is the Intel 2915 MiniPCI card, which is offered in single and dual band.
To stave off the "but what about *Insert vendor here* statements, this is in my experience. Linksys, Belkin, Netgear, etc have very FEW ccx compatible products.
What does it mean to be "CCX Certified"? That means that THIS CARD with THIS DRIVER (and sometimes in THIS LAPTOP) meets the CCX standard. The standard does very little with range and speed, but is instead concerned with security and feature compatibility. We don't worry about bouncing signal through 4 rooms and around a corner, we worry about things like "does security schema A work with this setup".
CCXV3 means that all the latest things are supported, and work together, such as WPA2 with 802.1Q tagging using LEAP/EAP authentication, Wep128 with EAP-TLS and Brodcast Key Rotation w/CMIC. During testing, we typically setup the test, and run a script that releases/renews DHCP, Pings a host, receives Multicast for one minute, and does a get/put/get ftp transfer, with a FC compare on the files to ensure integrity.
During testing, we use the client's utility i.e Atheros Client Utility (may be rebranded/cobranded), Intel Proset, and Broadcom Wireless utility.
I prefer Atheros, as it seems straight forward in setup/use. Atheros is used in many laptops (Dell, Gateway, Fujitsu amoung others) and is the chipset used in Cisco cards. Sometimes they have a habit of just dying with 802.1X authentication profiles, if you make lots of changes. Removing and recreating the profile helps.
Intel has a decent utility, but has a few (from a testing standpoint) annoyances. The biggest one is the "Admin Tools" option required to setup SSO (Single Sign On). The caveat to my dislike is that it's a HUGE benifit in the enterprise, because you can lock down wireless for corp use (and keep PSK/WEP keys secure). This does cause some troubleshooting problems, as the only error with SSO profiles is "contact your admin", as opposed to the other 2, which will say "Leap Timout, Leap credentials refused" etc. They used to (a few revs back) have some funky roaming algorithims, where it would refuse to roam, and would sometimes disassociate and then scan and find the new AP instead of roaming. This has been getting better it seems. Some settings are in funky places (WPA confused me for a minute with the newest version).
Broadcom has a utility that is very WZCish. Some features are ONLY supported via CLI (such as specifing multiple keys, Power level settings, etc). They also do a few things odd on RM requests, where the do not respond with the serving AP.
Of the 3, I prefer Atheros based (CB21 is incredible), then Intel based, then Broadcom.
Spidey, this what you were looking for?
First, I would establish what (imho) are the big 3 chip makers in the wireless business. Those are Atheros, Broadcom, and Intel. Each of these have multiple chips they use, but most have 2-3 active products. You should take note that when looking at these, there are sometimes even 2 cards with the same product, but are "dual band", meaning 5 Ghz (802.11A) and 2.4 Ghz (802.11B/G). An example is the Intel 2915 MiniPCI card, which is offered in single and dual band.
To stave off the "but what about *Insert vendor here* statements, this is in my experience. Linksys, Belkin, Netgear, etc have very FEW ccx compatible products.
What does it mean to be "CCX Certified"? That means that THIS CARD with THIS DRIVER (and sometimes in THIS LAPTOP) meets the CCX standard. The standard does very little with range and speed, but is instead concerned with security and feature compatibility. We don't worry about bouncing signal through 4 rooms and around a corner, we worry about things like "does security schema A work with this setup".
CCXV3 means that all the latest things are supported, and work together, such as WPA2 with 802.1Q tagging using LEAP/EAP authentication, Wep128 with EAP-TLS and Brodcast Key Rotation w/CMIC. During testing, we typically setup the test, and run a script that releases/renews DHCP, Pings a host, receives Multicast for one minute, and does a get/put/get ftp transfer, with a FC compare on the files to ensure integrity.
During testing, we use the client's utility i.e Atheros Client Utility (may be rebranded/cobranded), Intel Proset, and Broadcom Wireless utility.
I prefer Atheros, as it seems straight forward in setup/use. Atheros is used in many laptops (Dell, Gateway, Fujitsu amoung others) and is the chipset used in Cisco cards. Sometimes they have a habit of just dying with 802.1X authentication profiles, if you make lots of changes. Removing and recreating the profile helps.
Intel has a decent utility, but has a few (from a testing standpoint) annoyances. The biggest one is the "Admin Tools" option required to setup SSO (Single Sign On). The caveat to my dislike is that it's a HUGE benifit in the enterprise, because you can lock down wireless for corp use (and keep PSK/WEP keys secure). This does cause some troubleshooting problems, as the only error with SSO profiles is "contact your admin", as opposed to the other 2, which will say "Leap Timout, Leap credentials refused" etc. They used to (a few revs back) have some funky roaming algorithims, where it would refuse to roam, and would sometimes disassociate and then scan and find the new AP instead of roaming. This has been getting better it seems. Some settings are in funky places (WPA confused me for a minute with the newest version).
Broadcom has a utility that is very WZCish. Some features are ONLY supported via CLI (such as specifing multiple keys, Power level settings, etc). They also do a few things odd on RM requests, where the do not respond with the serving AP.
Of the 3, I prefer Atheros based (CB21 is incredible), then Intel based, then Broadcom.
Spidey, this what you were looking for?
