Grex Hardware Conference

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Grex Hardware Item 191: Wireless Ethernet
Entered by ball on Wed Sep 13 22:50:02 UTC 2006:

Does Apple's original AirPort card (as used in early clamshell iBooks)
plug into something proprietary, or a standard port that I might find
on other systems?  I ask because I've drawn a blank on Linux drivers
for a Linksys WUSB-11 (rev 2.8 I think, it's not in front of me) that
has an Atheros chip. I'm tempted to seek out an AirPort card, in part
because it would leave my USB port free for a mouse. If I'm going to
spend money on a wireless ethernet card though, I would like it to be
one that I can move to another machine when the iBook eventually dies.

8 responses total.

#1 of 8 by rcurl on Thu Sep 14 06:17:34 2006:

Use an ethernet bridge adapter. Network bridge devices do not require 
device driver software. Network settings for can be made through a 
browser-based administrative interface.

#2 of 8 by ball on Thu Sep 14 22:20:13 2006:

That sounds like a good plan, since the 100baseTX port is working now.
Would that kind of adaptor let my iBook join an 802.11b network that
runs in 'infrastructure mode' (with an access point)?  Is there a
particular make or model that you could recommend?

#3 of 8 by rcurl on Thu Sep 14 22:50:44 2006:

I don't have a lot of experience with different devices, but I'm using a
Macwireless.com 11g Ethernet Bridge on a wired LAN with two Macs to access
an Airport Extreme base. It does permit a choice of infrastructure or adhoc
networks. So I would say - yes. I use Firefox to configure the bridge. It
supports others but not IE. You can get more info at their website.

#4 of 8 by gull on Mon Sep 18 18:39:40 2006:

If your machine has a PCMCIA slot, that would be another option.  I've 
had an Orinoco silver card for years and it's always worked well for 
me.

#5 of 8 by ball on Tue Sep 19 00:10:53 2006:

My machine is a first generation "clamshell" iBook, which lacks any
PC-Card or Cardbus slots.

#6 of 8 by cardude on Mon Oct 2 01:00:36 2006:

I think the airport slot might be pcmcia slot not sure though

#7 of 8 by ball on Tue Mar 15 15:15:07 2022:

    Thinking about Wifi, for a greenfield site would you
enable 802.11a on 5 GHz APs or only support 802.11ac and/or
802.11ax?

#8 of 8 by tod on Thu Dec 15 16:36:12 2022:

I would choose based on a wifi survey of other signals.  Sometimes you
might need to use the 2.4GHz wifi and a specific channels or risk getting
dropped when your signal is weaker than another AP.

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