[clug] PCI WiFi cards

[Kevin Pulo]

I also have Ralink cards, and while I'm not sure I'd go so far as to
recommend them, I haven't had any problems lately, especially in
recent kernels.

I have an old rt2400/rt2460 which is in AP mode (rt2400pci driver in
2.6.33 i686 with hostapd 0.7.1 - this was hard until I figured out the
devel version of hostapd was needed, at which point it became very
easy), and an rt2561/rt61 (Linksys WMP54G ver 4.1) which works fine as
a normal client (managed and adhoc) and sometimes promisc mode for
auditing, using the rt61pci driver in a stock kernel 2.6.29.6 x86_64.

Kev


On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 07:08:34AM +1000, David Cottrill wrote:

> For better or worse I've always had Ralink based cards and these days  
> they also Just Work, though there can be issues if you want something  
> more than just a wpa client.
> David
>
>
> On 21/06/2010, at 3:45 PM, Francis Whittle <fj.whittle at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> $ lspci -vs 3:6
>> 03:06.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. Atheros  
>> AR5001X
>> + Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
>>    Subsystem: D-Link System Inc D-Link AirPlus DWL-G520 Wireless PCI
>> Adapter(rev.B)
>>    Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 20
>>    Memory at fdce0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
>>    Capabilities: <access denied>
>>    Kernel driver in use: ath5k
>>
>> I've been using these cards for a couple of years now, both as managed
>> clients and access points (although that was back when you had to use
>> madwifi).
>>
>> On recent releases of Ubuntu this card is "Plug it in and go," as ath5k
>> is generally compiled and distributed with the kernel.  No proprietary
>> firmware, no external tools, it just works.  Not sure about the most
>> recent stable release of Debian, but it works perfectly on sid, and who
>> uses anything older than Debian "unstable" (also known as Debian
>> still-stabler-than-Ubuntu-ever-is) anyway?
>>
>> The one corollary is that on a tower box you really want to replace the
>> mini aerial supplied with a cabled one to get any decent reception (or
>> have your box oriented so the back of it is facing towards the access
>> point).  To this end I have a DWL-M60AT patch antenna hooked up to  
>> mine.
>>
>> Unfortunately these don't seem to be available at the easy retailers  
>> any
>> more.  The DWA-510 that's available from Dick Smith and Harris Tech
>> right now uses an ralink rt61 chipset, for which I don't believe  
>> there's
>> direct kernel support (there -is- some downloadable driver, but I've
>> pretty much always had atheros chips).
>>
>> All that aside, it's probably much easier to go the USB route.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Francis
>>
>> On Sun, 2010-06-20 at 19:13 +1000, Grant Baldwin wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I'm after a PCI card to do 802.11g (or n if possible) that will work
>>> reliably under current stable releases of Debian and Ubuntu.
>>>
>>> In the past, this has been a serious headache and a significant point 
>>> of
>>> effort; not infrequently requiring interrogating PCI busses,  
>>> recompiling
>>> long tool chains and screwing around with windows drivers. The only  
>>> good
>>> experience with wireless and Linux I've had to date have been with  
>>> Intel
>>> Centrino chipsets.
>>>
>>> Is there a decent, reliable, supported family of PCI wireless cards  
>>> out
>>> there?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Grant Baldwin
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> linux mailing list
>> linux at lists.samba.org
>> https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux

Kev.

-- 
.----------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Kevin Pulo                Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur. |
| kev at pulo.com.au               _ll l_ng__g_e_ _r_ hi__ly p__d_ct__le. |
| http://www.kev.pulo.com.au/         God casts the die, not the dice. |
`--------------- Linux: The choice of a GNU generation. ---------------'
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