WLAN and netBooks

[dukibean]

Having spent several hours drudging through various sites relating to WLAN hardware, I'm still none-the-wiser as to what base station and cards I should invest in for my netBook?

Basically I want to:

- Share my cable connection with my netBook, laptop and PC
- Transfer files on a LAN via FTP
- Enable WEP
- Have easy configuration tools
- Have totally compatibility between base station and cards
- Preferably have a firewall via the base station
- Not obscure my stylus slot
- Not spend too much

I'd be most grateful if any other forum participants could pass on any relevent knowledge that they may have, so I can compile it and make a more informed decision as to the best possible hardware for a netBook.

Kind regards

[diem]

you're covering a lot of ground with this question :eek:

The compatibility chart in my FAQ should tell you what cards are supported. Find a picture of any of these cards and you'll be able to tell if the stylus hole is obstructed. Find the spec and you'll find out what encryption they support.

As far as 'total compatibility between base station and cards' is concerned, good luck! We'd all love that but this is bleeding edge technology; best any of us can hope for is buy what seems to look compatible and feel our way into it. On the plus side, 802.11b is pretty well standardised now - all cards should work with all access points to one degree or another.

As far as sharing cable connection is concerned, that is exactly what these so-called 'home gateway' devices do. Some have a firewall built-in, but here you have to trade off features against cost, so you'll have to look at what's out there and decide how much you're preapred to spend. A basic gateway is about £130, but a fully-featured one may be as much as £250.

Easy configuration - I'm afraid this is relative to what you already know about TCP/IP LANs. Do some reading on this topic and any device will be easy to configure. They all tend to be configured via browsing to them as if they were a web site.

This weekend I'll be testing out my spanking new Linksys WPC11 PC Card with a friend's all-in-one D-Link gateway (which does have a firewall). I'll let you know how well it works. That aside, all I can suggest is that you buy kit on a sale-or-return basis, and get playing ;)

[dukibean]

Many thanks for info. I look forward to hearing of your Linksys testing.

[dvdooren]

Yan,
What Linksys card are you going to test? The WPC 11 ver. 3?
Another question: are you testing it in a netbook or a 7book? Thanks in advance.

Daan

[fladda]

If you just want to connect you Netbook/7Book to a PC/Linux box, then I suggest that you use peer-to-peer mode. An access point is not required at all. Peer-to-peer still allows you to use WEP encryption. However, I believe that all your cards need to be same/similar types for peer-to-peer to work correctly (not sure of compatibility limitations here).

I'm currently using peer-to-peer at home with Enterasys Raomabout cards and everything is working fine at 11Mbps. At work I'm using an access point, and this is working fine with Lucent Orinoco silver cards.

I would recommend using Lucent Orinoco silver cards on grounds of cost, compatibility, power consumption and RF performance. Enterasys/Cabletron Roamabout is the same card under another name. These cards can be purchased on Ebay for GBP 20-30.

However, Orinoco cards block the stylus hole which is very frustrating at times ! If only Psion had not put the stylus hole in such a silly place - Ah the benefit of hindsight.

802.11b equipment is currently very cheap in the USA, as 802.11b appears to have been superceded by 802.11a over there. I predict that prices of 802.11b equipment will fall a lot over the next few months. Might be better to get a minimum set of cheap components for the present, and wait for prices to fall.

In particular the price of access points is silly in the UK at present.

Netgear and others will soon be selling relatively cheap ADSL modems with combined firewall/router/802.11b card slot. These would be pretty ideal for a Netbook, as you'd have permanent broadband without having to have power hungry lardbut PCs turned on 24 hours a day. Keeping a PC turned on 24/7 for a year costs about GBP 50-100 in electricity !

Ralph

[diem]

Hi Daan,

No, my Linksys WPC11 is not the v.3 - the v.3 is known not to work with 7/netBook, since it uses the Prism 2.5 chipset. I will be testing with a 'real' netBook.

[wanman]

I will be testing with a 'real' netBook.

I hope this isn't a sign of prejudice against us 7book owners (/netbook wannabies/young pretenders) !!! lol

Si

[diem]

wouldn't dream of it! :D

[diem]

Have now tested the Linksys WPC11 wireless card.

It works fine and does not obscure the stylus hole. Only failure is WEP - the card is based on the Intersil Prism 2 chipset, and it looks as though the netBook's Lucent driver (Intersil Prism is based on Lucent's reference design) will only set up WEP successfully with cards based on Lucent's own Hermes chipset.