wireless card for linux box fc2

Can anyone recommend a worthy pci wireless card for an extra comp I got
lying around? I would prefer one that works out of the box in fc2 or
atleast easy to setup.

fog-dog wrote:

> Can anyone recommend a worthy pci wireless card for an extra comp I got
> lying around? I would prefer one that works out of the box in fc2 or
> atleast easy to setup.

You can try an 802.11b rt2400 chip (from RaLink) based PCI card (US$40
approx).

The GPL'd drivers have recently matured to the point where they are now
stable on a 2.6.x kernel.

The 802.11g rt2500 chip drivers aren't quite ready for primetime yet....but
are under active development (judging from the mail list activity).

rt2400.sourceforge.net

steve <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>fog-dog wrote:
>
>> Can anyone recommend a worthy pci wireless card for an extra comp I got
>> lying around? I would prefer one that works out of the box in fc2 or
>> atleast easy to setup.
>
>You can try an 802.11b rt2400 chip (from RaLink) based PCI card (US$40
>approx).

Considering the speed difference between 802.11b and 802.11g, I wouldn't
recommend 802.11b generally. It might well be fine for specific uses
where speed is not significant though (e.g., non-interactive uses).

>The GPL'd drivers have recently matured to the point where they are now
>stable on a 2.6.x kernel.
>
>The 802.11g rt2500 chip drivers aren't quite ready for primetime yet....but
>are under active development (judging from the mail list activity).
>
>rt2400.sourceforge.net

Using ndiswrapper to load manufacturer supplied drivers seems to
work very well. I have an HP ze4900 laptop (running a 2.6.9
Linux kernel) with a Broadcom builtin wireless, and find that it
works fine with either the bcmwl5 or bcmwl5a driver supplied by
HP.

On the other hand an rt2500 based WMP54G card from Linksys,
using the supplied rt2500 driver, is simply wierd! Once it and
the access point have been configured, it does work fine... but
the setup process was rather tedious because any change in the
access point configuration (a Linksys WRT54G router) would cause
a kernel panic on the box with the WMP54G card!

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) (E-Mail Removed)

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 02:52:10 -0900, Floyd L. Davidson wrote:

(Hi Floyd, I thought you were spending time away from rec.backcountry :-)

> steve <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>fog-dog wrote:
>>
>>> Can anyone recommend a worthy pci wireless card for an extra comp I got
>>> lying around? I would prefer one that works out of the box in fc2 or
>>> atleast easy to setup.
>>
>>You can try an 802.11b rt2400 chip (from RaLink) based PCI card (US$40
>>approx).
>
> Considering the speed difference between 802.11b and 802.11g, I wouldn't
> recommend 802.11b generally. It might well be fine for specific uses
> where speed is not significant though (e.g., non-interactive uses).

Well, if you're mostly internetting then even the lower settings of
802.11b aren't going to be a big drag on your life, but if you are pushing
and stretching large quantities of data like taffy through your LAN then
802.11g will make you happier.

The 802.11b hardware has the related advantages of being obsolete
(read: not-so-bad driver choice) and therefore cheap.

>>The GPL'd drivers have recently matured to the point where they are now
>>stable on a 2.6.x kernel.
>>
>>The 802.11g rt2500 chip drivers aren't quite ready for primetime yet....but
>>are under active development (judging from the mail list activity).
>>
>>rt2400.sourceforge.net
>
> Using ndiswrapper to load manufacturer supplied drivers seems to
> work very well. I have an HP ze4900 laptop (running a 2.6.9
> Linux kernel) with a Broadcom builtin wireless, and find that it
> works fine with either the bcmwl5 or bcmwl5a driver supplied by
> HP.

Did I read something about there being a native Broadcom driver?

> On the other hand an rt2500 based WMP54G card from Linksys,
> using the supplied rt2500 driver, is simply wierd! Once it and
> the access point have been configured, it does work fine... but
> the setup process was rather tedious because any change in the
> access point configuration (a Linksys WRT54G router) would cause
> a kernel panic on the box with the WMP54G card!

There's black magic in some of those access points. I have a D-Link
access point that is perfectly capable of bringing down a machine 20
metres away if it is restarted after changing some settings.

Sad to say, but it shouldn't be possible for a non-core device driver, no
matter how freakily written, to take down the kernel of any operating
system in the 21st century.

And now seeing you here has reminded me that I owe the net.wolverine some
mail. Keep a look out for the net.polar-bear!
--
Mark South: World Citizen, Net Denizen

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
steve <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>fog-dog wrote:
>
>> Can anyone recommend a worthy pci wireless card for an extra comp I got
>> lying around? I would prefer one that works out of the box in fc2 or
>> atleast easy to setup.
>
>You can try an 802.11b rt2400 chip (from RaLink) based PCI card (US$40
>approx).
>
>The GPL'd drivers have recently matured to the point where they are now
>stable on a 2.6.x kernel.
>
>The 802.11g rt2500 chip drivers aren't quite ready for primetime yet....but
>are under active development (judging from the mail list activity).
>
>rt2400.sourceforge.net

This page doesn't seem to list any WLAN cards than use this chip.
How does one go about finding out which devices (as in brand name,
model number, etc.) use a given chip?

--
Please reply to: | "When you are dealing with secretive regimes
pciszek at panix dot com | that want to deceive, you're never going to
Autoreply is disabled | be able to be positive." -Condoleezza Rice

Hi Floyd,

I have a WMP54G card, can you please tell me how can I configure rt2500
driver on Fedore.

Thanks,
Ambar

Floyd L. Davidson wrote:

>>You can try an 802.11b rt2400 chip (from RaLink) based PCI card (US$40
>>approx).
>
> Considering the speed difference between 802.11b and 802.11g, I wouldn't
> recommend 802.11b generally.**It*might*well*be*fine*for*specific*uses
> where speed is not significant though (e.g., non-interactive uses).

I agree......

Though 802.11b has greater range and can be used for home LAN for Internet
access as the access is rarely more than 2mbps.

In my own case, I have the file server on 54mb 802.11g and most
(performance) demanding user on 802.11g...and the rest are on
802.11b....which is more than enough for their use.

I would have preferred 802.11g....but until recently it was much more
expensive and drivers for Linux were not mature on the lower cost devices.

So 802.11b it had to be. :-)

Mark South wrote:

> There's black magic in some of those access points.**I*have*a*D-Link
> access point that is perfectly capable of bringing down a machine 20
> metres away if it is restarted after changing some settings.
>
> Sad to say, but it shouldn't be possible for a non-core device driver, no
> matter how freakily written, to take down the kernel of any operating
> system in the 21st century.

Might be RF interference with your mobo....and not the driver at all. :-)

Have you tested for that?

Paul Ciszek wrote:

>
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> steve <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>fog-dog wrote:
>>
>>> Can anyone recommend a worthy pci wireless card for an extra comp I got
>>> lying around? I would prefer one that works out of the box in fc2 or
>>> atleast easy to setup.
>>
>>You can try an 802.11b rt2400 chip (from RaLink) based PCI card (US$40
>>approx).
>>
>>The GPL'd drivers have recently matured to the point where they are now
>>stable on a 2.6.x kernel.
>>
>>The 802.11g rt2500 chip drivers aren't quite ready for primetime
>>yet....but are under active development (judging from the mail list
>>activity).
>>
>>rt2400.sourceforge.net
>
> This page doesn't seem to list any WLAN cards than use this chip.
> How does one go about finding out which devices (as in brand name,
> model number, etc.) use a given chip?

Minitar.com is a company that definitely make a device using this chip.

They also sponsored/supported the GPL-ification of the rt2400 device driver,
so they are "worthy".

:-)

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>Hi Floyd,
>
>I have a WMP54G card, can you please tell me how can I configure rt2500
>driver on Fedore.

I use Slackware, and really don't know what other distributions
do for setting up any modules, least of all wireless. But I can
tell you which specific commands are needed to do the
configuration, and then perhaps you can figure out where the
commands go on your particular system.

First, you need to get both the ndiswrapper software and the
wireless_tools package. I'm using 0.13pre1 version of
ndiswrapper, but I don't think that makes a great deal of
difference. Try what you have, and if it doesn't work go find
the latest thing available.

On the other hand, do a web search for wireless_tools.27.tar.gz,
and download that one rather than even bothering with any of the
earlier versions.

The ndiswrapper package contains a loader and a kernel module.
Together they allow loading a Windows driver for the wireless
card. I used the driver supplied by Linksys on the CD. The
files you want are Rt2500.INF and rt2500.sys. (There is also a
file rt2500.cat, but I don't know if it is used or not.)

Compile and install ndiswrapper and wireless_tools, then copy
the rt2500 files to some handy directory, and as root do the
following:

rm -rf /etc/ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper -i Rt2000INF
modprobe ndiswrapper

Check dmesg for errors.

ndiswrapper -l

This last one should print out something that looks like this:

Installed ndis drivers:
rt2500 driver present, hardware present

At that point you should have a valid wlan0 network
interface. Choose an IP address and a host name for that
interface, and put them into /etc/hosts, like this

192.168.1.11 wificlient

Also choose a name for the subnet, and put it into
/etc/networks:

192.168.1.0 wifinet

To configure the wlan0 interface, you need to run ifconfig and
then iwconfig.

ifconfig wlan0 wificlient broadcast 192.168.1.255

(Set the broadcast appropriately for the subnet.)

To confirm that it has succeeded,

ifconfig wlan0

Should print out something like this (with the appropriate MAC
and IP, as opposed to these specific ones):

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:90:4B:95:C3:89
inet addr:192.168.1.11 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:19982 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:19419 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2592551 (2.4 Mb) TX bytes:1692745 (1.6 Mb)
Interrupt:11 Memory:e0200000-e0201fff

Then you need to configure the wmp54g. Assuming you have a
"managed" network using WEP encryption with a key "1234567890",
and that your ESSID is "mukherji", the command would be:

iwconfig wlan0 essid mukherji key 1234567890

To confirm that has succeeded,

iwconfig wlan0

Should print out something like this:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"mukherji"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:12:17:27:FE:BA
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:25 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Encryption key:1234-5678-90 Security mode:restricted
Power Managementff
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-64 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:30 Missed beacon:0

Specifically, what you want to look for are the MAC address
given as the "Access Point", which first should not be all 0's
(indicating it is not connected) and second should be the MAC
address for your access point. The ESSID of course should
match, and so should the Frequency and Mode. The Bit Rate will
give you an indication of just how good the connection is
(ranging from 1 to 54 Mbps). The Link Quality and Noise level
values appear to be bogus, as they never change. The Signal
level should range from about -35 dBm at best down to as low as
-90 dBm (at which point it will probably cease to function).

At that point you actually have a network connection. The only
thing left is routing. By default, when you did the ifconfig it
created a route that is equivalent to this:

route add -net 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev wlan0

Basically it will send everything with a 192.168.1.x address to
the wlan0 interface. Obviously you will want to add a default
route, and perhaps route other addresses differently. I have a
wired network on 192.168.0.x and an Internet gateway at
192.168.0.2, so I use these two commands to complete my routing:

# route everything going to the LAN to wlan0
/sbin/route add -net 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev wlan0

# set default route
/sbin/route add default gw 192.168.0.2 wlan0


Now... all of the above assumes that you do have an access point
currently configured and active. The ESSID, Mode, Encryption, all
have to match or the iwconfig command will fail. Note that once
you have done the ifconfig command you can look to see just what
your wmp54g card can "see" in the way of access points:

iwlist wlan0 scanning

Here is an example of what one of my computer lists when I do that
(The first two have the entire list of Bit Rates shown, just to
show the difference between an 802.11g (Cell 01) and an 802.11b
(Cell 02). Note that all of them list 802.11b as the protocol...)

wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:0F:66:F0:C7:62
ESSID:"La_Bamba_Gift_Shop"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11b
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
Quality:0/100 Signal level:-64 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rate:1Mb/s
Bit Rate:2Mb/s
Bit Rate:5.5Mb/s
Bit Rate:11Mb/s
Bit Rate:18Mb/s
Bit Rate:24Mb/s
Bit Rate:36Mb/s
Bit Rate:54Mb/s
Bit Rate:6Mb/s
Bit Rate:9Mb/s
Bit Rate:12Mb/s
Bit Rate:48Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100
Extra:atim=0

Cell 02 - Address: 00:40:96:39:BEC
ESSID:"IC-ONESTOP"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11b
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.447 GHz (Channel 8)
Quality:0/100 Signal level:-84 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s
Bit Rate:2 Mb/s
Bit Rate:5.5 Mb/s
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100
Extra:atim=0

Cell 03 - Address: 00:0D:88:BE:B4:7F
ESSID:"APINET"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11b
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality:0/100 Signal level:-86 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rate:1Mb/s
[ ... snipped ]

Cell 04 - Address: 00:0D:88:BF:18:BF
ESSID:"whip-tech"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11b
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality:0/100 Signal level:-87 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s
[ ... snipped ]

Cell 05 - Address: 00:40:96:48:08:EC
ESSID:"IC-ONESTOP"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11b
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.447 GHz (Channel 8)
Quality:0/100 Signal level:-80 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s
[ ... snipped ]

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) (E-Mail Removed)