further information on previous 802.11 thread?

[jan newmarch]

On Thu, 25 Apr 2002 clug at repose.cx wrote:

> 1. I'd like to use two cards, and avoid the base station, as I really don't
>    want to incure the extra expense. I seem to recall that doing this is when
>    the cards are placed in "ad-hoc" mode, but there's this small piece of
>    information floating around in my head that says that you require
>    new/particular cards to do this nicely without a base station. Am I
>    imagining things? Can base-station-less operation be done fine with no
>    consideration as to the type of card? I just remember reading somewhere
>    about a "better" way to do it, or something. Maybe it was making one of the
>    cards act like an access point?

You do have to be careful, because some of the current drivers are
incomplete/buggy. For example, Aironet PCI card is fine in ad-hoc mode.  
Wavelan cardbus card is fine in my laptop in both adhoc and managed. For
D-Link, there are 3 drivers. Only one of those supports PCI cards in adhoc
mode (and in one application gets only 400kbps transfer rates - well short
of 11Mbps).

> 
> 3. The gateway I've got set up for our house is in our storeroom. This would be
>    the computer I'd be most interested in connecting one of the access cards to
>    (by way of a pci<->pcmcia convertor), as it's the only computer that never
>    gets turned off for any reason. Our storeroom is made of concrete and brick,
>    however. Would this likely impact on the performance of the wireless link?
>    I'm only interested in setting up a wireless network through the house, so
>    it's likely the other card will be close by - at most 2-3 rooms away. 

Walls are good ways of blocking signals. If I step outside my front door 
and put a wall in the way, I start losing 20% of packets immediately.

> 
> 4. If the concrete is going to greatly affect things, what options are there?
>    Running an aerial out of that room would probably be cumbersome. I guess the
>    only alternative would be to have the link connected to another computer,
>    but I'm not eager to sleep close to something operating at such frequencies
>    (call me paranoid :-)

You are paranoid :-) Would you sleep next to your microwave? It uses the
same frequency, but is just higher powered and better insulated.

> 
> I guess what I'm interested in is if the wireless market is a bit like the
> ethernet market, where a standard 8139 card will do the job fairly well, but
> spending more money on a better card will see you hit closer to the 100Mbit
> maximum.

I'm hoping to see secondhand wireless cards at computer swap meets selling 
for $5 like ethernet cards do - I might have to wait awhile :-(

Jan
-- 
  Jan Newmarch, School of Network Computing
  Monash University 
  Email: jan.newmarch at infotech.monash.edu.au
  WWW: http://jan.netcomp.monash.edu.au

No-one calls a spade a spade if there's a chance of calling it instead an
HDK ("hole development kit")