best 802.11a Card ?

What card has the best range and allows you easily integrate an
external antenna?

Thank you !
Tom

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 15:11:38 -0800, TC
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>What card has the best range and allows you easily integrate an
>external antenna?

I think I could supply less information in such a question, but I
would need to work at it. So, we try the interrogation method of
prying loose the necessary information to answer your question.

1. How much range? Feet? Miles?
2. What speed were you expecteding at that range? They are related.
The farther you go, the weaker the signal. 802.11a tries to
compensate for the increased error rate of the weak signal by slowing
down. What's your minimum acceptable thruput in Mbits/sec?
3. Is this a client radio (one MAC address) or a wireless bridge
(more than one MAC address)? It would be really nice if we had a clue
as to what you were going to do with this device.
4. Very long range usually implies a big dish antenna. At 5.6GHz,
solid dishes are the only way to get really high gains without leaking
through the barbeque grill dish. Can you afford a solid dish antenna,
or are you willing to tolerate a lower gain panel antenna?
5. I assume that the radio must be mounted at the antenna. Are you
looking for an 802.11a PCMCIA or CardBus card to install on an SBC
(single board computah) inside a waterproof package, or are you
looking for an integrated antenna/radio combination that includes a
package?
6. Do you care about price? If so, what's your limit?


--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005, TC <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> What card has the best range and allows you easily integrate an
> external antenna?

first part: difficult to answer - .. depends
second part: AFAIK there are still no 802.11a Cards with external
antennas, cause of some FCC regulations.

There are 11a-APs with external Antennas from Lancom and Cisco has
anounced a AP with external Antennas. But i know no PC-Card (there is no
11a-PCMCIA) with external Antenna.

Greetings Pitz
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