Thank you, orinoco_cs

[Timothy Murphy]

I'm using a Lucent Orinoco Gold PCMCIA card on my laptop
and an Avaya/Lucent Orinoco PCI card on my desktop.
(The latter is a PCI-to-PCMCIA adaptor with an Orinoco Gold PCMCIA card in it.)

This setup works beautifully.
I was previously using 2 Proxim cards,
but the Orinoco cards have substantially greater range.

So I'd like to start by thanking David Gibson, Jean Tourrilhes
and any others involved in the development of this software.

I have a number of what are probably very elementary queries --
mostly general WiFi queries rather than to do with Orinoco cards.
I give the iwconfig info about the 2 cards below.

(1) I'm not clear on the requirements for mode, ESSID, etc.
In my case it does not seem to matter whether I set mode
to ad-hoc or managed; 
I cannot set mode to master, or change the ESSID,
at least while the card is active
(as opposed to changing the relevant entry in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts).

Is there any "WiFi for dummies" on the net,
that will explain these things?

(2) What exactly is the significance of the entries
for Link Quality, Signal level and  Noise level ?
Are they accurate;
or if not, is there any other way of determining
how sensitive the card or cards are?

Again, is there anything on the web
that will elucidate these matters for innocents like me?

(3) On a slightly different tack,
what is the relation between Avaya, Agere, Lucent, Orinoco,
Wavelan and IEEE?
Has Lucent licensed the Orinoco hardware or software
to companies such as Avaya?

(4) As a matter of (minor) interest,
why does the PCMCIA card give a bit-rate of 2Mb/s,
while the PCI card claims 11Mb/s ?

(5) I always get the warning about different versions
(12 against 14 in this case).
Does it really matter?
And if so, what can one do about it.

============== Log.pcmcia ================
Script started on Tue Sep 24 20:18:14 2002
[tim at william tim]$ su
Password: 
[root at william tim]# iwconfig eth0
Warning: Driver for device eth0 has been compiled with version 14
of Wireless Extension, while this program is using version 12.
Some things may be broken...

eth0      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"maths.tcd.ie"  Nickname:"william"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.457GHz  Access Point: 02:02:2D:4A:52:80  
          Bit Rate:2Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity:1/3  
          Retry limit:4   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0/92  Signal level:134/153  Noise level:134/153
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

[root at william tim]# exit
exit
[tim at william tim]$ exit

Script done on Tue Sep 24 20:20:09 2002
==========================================

============== Log.pci ===================
Script started on Tue Sep 24 20:16:43 2002
[tim at alfred tim]$ su
Password: 
[root at alfred tim]# iwconfig eth2
Warning : Device eth2 has been compiled with version 14
of Wireless Extension, while we are using version 12.
Some things may be broken...

eth2      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"maths.tcd.ie"  Nickname:"alfred.murphy.ie"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.457GHz  Access Point: 02:02:2D:4A:52:80
          Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity:1/3  
          Retry limit:4   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0/92  Signal level:134/153  Noise level:134/153
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:125  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

[root at alfred tim]# exit
exit
[tim at alfred tim]$ exit

Script done on Tue Sep 24 20:17:04 2002
==========================================

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: 00353-86-233 6090
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland