Wireless LAN recommendation ?

Edmund Craske edmund at m00is.net
Mon Dec 2 21:37:40 GMT 2002


I'd suggest going for 802.11b as it is generally well supported (at
least, compared to other standards) by most operating systems, and
whilst doesn't provide the highest of speeds, can easily saturate the
average broadband internet connection, and would be fine for surfing,
emails, playing games etc. If you want to use it for transferring files,
use a bit of Cat5 :-P Another useful reason for having 802.11b kit is
that thats what most other people have in the way of wireless kit, so
interconnectivity is easy (look at www.consume.net for good examples).

Ed.

-----Original Message-----
From: freebsd-users-admin at uk.freebsd.org
[mailto:freebsd-users-admin at uk.freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Simon Dick
Sent: 02 December 2002 15:28
To: Pete French
Cc: freebsd-users at uk.freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Wireless LAN recommendation ?


On Mon, 2002-12-02 at 15:09, Pete French wrote:
> > for the time being you need a licence to use 802.11a, which costs a 
> > few tens of pounds... you'll also probably get less useful range 
> > than 802.11b, depends if you live in an olde thick-wall house or a 
> > new cardboard house.
> 
> TThick walled - but its only got to go about 12 feet from the study to

> the linge (through 2 concrete walls, admittedly)
> 
> > the licence takes a short time to get, and lasts 6 months.  by then 
> > the 5GHz 802.11a spectrum may be made open like 2.5GHz is for 
> > 802.11b.
> 
> very interesting - my old colleagues at the R.A. being their usual 
> selves I see! I ssuspect, however, that I am actually going to be 
> shafted by the lack of drivers for the laptop end of the network as 
> there dont appear to be OSX drivers for any 802.11a cards (I havent 
> investigated the FreeBSD end of things yet).

The slight drawback is that there is no public info on the chipsets
which means no FreeBSD drivers for 802.11a either :|

-- 
Simon Dick					simond at irrelevant.org


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