Confused regarding wifi equipment

ve

Hello all,

Myself and my wife recently moved in to our new house where we have currently setup an 802.11b Ad-hoc WLAN, between 2 desktop PCs. Last week we had a sales guy from Esat BT come to our house offering us "the 3 month free BB trial". I jumped at the offer as I didn't even realise we had BB in the area yet. So now I await my new modem/software/etc, in the post. When the sales guy was here I hit him with all sorts of questions primarily regarding QOS, and flexibility of service. TBH he hadn't a clue tech wise, which he openly admitted, but it didn't defer me from availing of what I see as a "free" trial. I must also point out I have mailed Esat with my technical queries and have yet received no reply, so I now have decided to turn to the wonderful world of bulletin boards to find the answer.

What I want to do is upgrade my home network to 802.11g (~54Mbit) status, using PCI WNICs. Preferably I'm looking for WNICs with Linux driver support as I would consider myself as a bit of a tech hobbyist and would like to be able to work in Linux without booting back in to windows everytime I want to go online or access the local network.

Secondly I'm looking for something to act as a wifi enabled router between the net and my local network. This is primarily where my confusion lies as I don't even know what to expect in the post off Esat, and if it can be used in conjunction with my home setup. I don't know anything about connectors (is it RJ45, or what?). What I'm guessing is that the Esat supplied modem will be connected to the phone socket, and this will connect to my wifi enabled router (using what means?). This router will then be able to route data between local machines, and the net, basically sharing the connection. At the moment myself and my wife are using "Internet Connection Sharing" in windows to share our existing dialup connection. This requires that the machine with the modem is constantly turned on for anyone to access the net. With my new setup I don't want to have to boot one machine to get the other one online. I would imagine that loads of people are (will be) going down this wirless LAN sharing a BB connection route, so surely it has been solved many times at this stage.

A trip to my local hardware store, the sales guy was straight up honest with me. He said that their WiFi stock was low and that I should really check out Komplett to get what I want. So I have. But I'm still a little worried as to what I should be buying. So far I've been looking at these:

Wifi Router: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=118982&cks=PRL

As regards PCI WNICs, none seem to be available for Linux. The only Windows ones are from SMC (are these cards any good, I never heard of that brand). Also I should point out that my existing 802.11b LAN is via external USB Bluetake WNICs (which I received for free), but failed to get up and running under Linux. However on a previous wired LAN, Linux had no problem picking up the internal NICs and installing drivers for them. Is there any chance that Linux (Fedora Core 2) could autodetect and install drivers for the WNICs from SMC for sale on Komplett?

I'm sorry for all the questions. I did however read through many other posts on this site before starting this topic, but unfortunately couldn't find anything to answer my questions specifically.

Thank you very much for your help and time (in advance)

optiplexgx270

This is a good unit Linksys Wireless Access Point Router w/ 4-Port Switch 802.11g at a good price with a 4port switch built in.

The one you mention looks good also really u to you.

muffen

The WiFi AP/router you have linked at komplett.ie will do fine.

When you get your ADSL, make sure you get the ethernet modem, and NOT the USB modem. If you get the ethernet modem, your modem will be hooked up to the normal phoneline, and from there you will use a network cable (standard cat5), to the WiFi router.

If you did get the USB modem, well.... if you did, change it
It is possible to still use the USB modem together with a WiFi router, although its a pain. You'll need a computer acting as a router inbetween... anyways, just get the Ethernet ADSL modem and the WiFi AP/router from komplett.ie, and it'll be all good

DemoniK

Not sure what type of modem you get with Esat - but most seem to provide the USB variety which only allows you to connect it to a single PC.

I bought the DLink DSL-G604T (€150 from PCWorld) (I think €130 at elara.ie), which has a built in ADSL Modem, and a Belkin F5D7050 11g USB NIC (€60 from PCWorld). Bought from PCWorld as I got activated on the Thursday and couldn't wait until Monday to get the gear...

Anyway, the Belkin is rumoured to work on Linux using LinuxAnt at least. Always worth looking at LinuxUSB if thinking of USB devices.

- RikD.

aaf

You'll get a Zylex Prestige 600 Series ADSL modem from Esat which has an Ethernet and a USB point so no probs there - just use Cat5 to connect your Esat modem to your WiFi router. I 2nd the Linksys WRT54G as already mentioned above. Very easy to set up and Linksys are a Cisco company so they are one of the best networking companies out there. The Linksys equipment maybe a little bit more expensive but worth it. Elara.ie are the best place to get the Linksys stuff. The PCI adapter I have, (up for sale as I don't need it!), is the Linksys WMP54G. I don't know whether the PCI Adapter supports Linux.

Dingatron

Does anyone know if eircom provides an ethernet modem?

Ripwave

ding wrote:

Does anyone know if eircom provides an ethernet modem?

eircom and ESAT/IOL have been providing dual USB/Ethernet models for th last year (they were introduced at the time that X-Box live was introduced, to allow X-Box users to take advantage of broadband on their X-Box as well as their PC).

UTV is the only significant provider of DSL that doesn't provide Ethernet support at no extra charge (they will provide an ethernet modem instead of a USB modem for an extra €50). Most of the smaller resellers seem to be providing dual USB/Ethernet equipment.

ve

Right -- thanks all so far for the replies. Ye have been most helpful.

So now I have two options regarding my wifi gateway, the URL=http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=118982&cks=PRL]3Com[/URL or URL=http://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfull.asp?productcode=ECE878707&productID=86320]LinkSys[/URL unit, which is fine.

Now what I really need is a 802.11g PCI NIC which has established Linux support. Does anyone have a such a NIC working under Linux?. Someone mentioned that Belkin has rumoured support. I will investigate this myself, but surely people have wifi networks running Linux @ home/work.

Also thank you for clearing up what sockets are available on the Esat supplied modem (USB & RJ45).

Any further assistance you can provide is once again grately appreciated. I'll be recommended this place to friends as a more professional helpdesk than that of your typical corporate "customer care".

All the best

tomk

There are very few 11g PCI Nics supported under Linux - PC cards are much better supported. However, if you can get hold of a SMC2802W Version 1, you can use the prism54 driver with it - this driver is included in kernel version 2.6.5 and higher, or you can patch a late 2.4.x kernel to support it. Version 1 is important - version 2 uses an unsupported chipset.

Another possibility is the Netgear WG311T. This uses the Atheros chipset, and Linux support is provided by the Madwifi project.

I use prism54 myself, but with a 3Com PC card.

Blaster99

You can possibly get a 802.11g card to work with ndiswrapper, which allows you to use a Windows driver under Linux. I recently spent an entire day trying to get ndiswrapper to work and failed, and I've now ordered an ethernet bridge instead so I can just use ethernet from the Linux box and the bridge does the wireless stuff. I'm sure I could have gotten it work but my time is worth a lot more than the price of an ethernet bridge.

Generally Komplett stocks substandard wireless equipment. I would go for Linksys, D-Link, or Netgear. Linksys has the primary benefit of having made their firmware open source so you can download firmware with more features from various places. I have two Linksys WRT54G and they're very good for the money. I upgraded the firmware and got SNMP support and hooked up MRTG to it, so I now get nice little traffic graphs.

Amazon.co.uk is cheaper than any of the places mentioned above and carry all brands I just mentioned.

DemoniK

I finally tried out the Belkin F5D7050 USB 11g NIC with linuxant, and it does work very well, although had to do some manipulation of inits to ensure the network was started after the hotplug daemon found the Usb adaptor! Only real problem is the $20 per MAC address.

Must try ndiswrapper and see if I can get that to work.

-RikD

Blaster99

Yeah I got my card to work with Linuxant too with absolutely no hassle, but $20 is roughly the difference between the card and a bridge and I have use for the card in another machine that runs Windows, so I went the hardware route. It always feels more reassuring to get some hardware for the money in any event.... The problem with Ndiswrapper and probably Linuxant (can't remember for sure) is that they're compiled against a particular Linux kernel so if you upgrade kernel you run into the possibility of having get another bloody version of the driver. Lots of hassle. Ndiswrapper doesn't work with FC2 or presumably any other dist based on a recent kernel, before you even go down that route.