On 4 Sep, this message from Rogério Brito echoed through cyberspace: > I'll probably be saving some money the next few months up to > Christmas to buy me things for wireless access.
:-) > 1 - Is the airport card (the one that goes inside the iBook) > completely supported under Linux? Has been commented extensively... Has always worked well for me. > 2 - If one would purchase a PCMCIA card for a x86 notebook, > which brands would be recommended, regarding the quality > of support under Linux (and also availability)? I also own a Cisco Aironet PCM350 card (don't know whether it's price is interesting re. other cards), which works top-class as well, and which has a _much_ better range than the built-in Airport in my TiBook. > 3 - Can anything base station be used in place of Apple's > expensive base station? Would there be any loss of > functionality? No, not right away. There are various modes of operation of a wireless network: managed, unmanaged, ... I forget all the names. Anyway, when you run an access point, most of the time you'll run in managed mode, where all traffic from client A to client B goes _through_ the base station. At the same time, the base station does bridging between wireless and wired. This 'managed' mode requires software support that is, AFAIK, not available in _any_ Linux driver for wireless cards. The hardware is the same, though. > I'm not exactly sure if I understand the concept of a base > station. To me, all descriptions that I read sound just like a > dedicated router (and possibly doing NAT) with ability of > connecting via waves (and possibly through ethernet). Is that > right? Bridging between wired and wireless, and doing routing/NAT towards a dial-up Internet connection, with dial-on-demand functionality. > If it is, then a base station could be substituted with, say, > an old computer with another (cheap) wireless card, right? For some applications, in non-managed mode, maybe. Not in managed mode, AFAIK. > Sorry for asking questions so basic here, but my training in > the area of networks is not as strong as I'd like, and I have > never even *seen* or used a wireless network in my life (not > common here where I live) and I'm just speculating if I should > buy the gadgets necessary after I graduate or if it will be a > better investment to use the money saved for something else > (like books). Go read Jean Tourrilhes' pages about wireless stuff: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/ Cheers Michel ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michel Lanners | " Read Philosophy. Study Art. 23, Rue Paul Henkes | Ask Questions. Make Mistakes. L-1710 Luxembourg | email [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cpu.lu/~mlan | Learn Always. "
