FOAK: Wireless gear

I've got a load of Netgear WG311 cards. Unfortunately they're the V3, which
means they're unreliable rubbish. Can anyone recommend an alternative that
works in both XP and if possible Linux, and works with WEP? I've not got the
time to keep fucking around with these things in the hope of eventually
makign them work. I bought 3 from Ebuyer several months ago and have only
lately gotten round to fitting them and found out that they're rubbish...

And can anyone recommend an alternative to the Netgear 834G router, as
whilst I've got one that I'm very happy with, I'm loathe to buy anything
else from the cunts after they produced a load of shite cards and failed to
reply to my emails to support.

 

Or even WPA. The 311s do work with WEP, but play up with WPA.

 

I had trouble with a Netgear MA311 USB adapter. It worked fine with my
laptop but not with my new desktop. Netgear replaced it with a newer
version. Couldn't get that working reliably with either PC. I bought an end
of line Linksys one from Novatech for a fiver. It works lovely. So does the
Linksys router it talks to (been going strong for over 4 years).

So, without being able to identify a specif product to recommend, anecdotal
evidence suggests Linksys is the brand to seek.

 

A fiver? These PCI cards were thirty quid each! I'm a bit loathe to use USB
though as a) it's not the most reliable thing to get working under Linux
IME, and b) I get patchy reception with another wireless card that I know
works at my place in Sheffield, so it's useful to be able to use an external
aerial.

 

Have a look at the Pheenet stuff from www.solwise.co.uk

Claims to support Microsoft Vista/XP and Linux. I run Pheenet wireless stuff
via PCMCIA or USB, depending on the laptop, under Linux with no issues at
all.

When I needed support from Solwise regarding my router, they were quick to
reply and accurate with the answer. Turned out to be my Blackdown java
install didn't play quite as nicely as the Sun variant. Not many companies
would know the difference, let alone on a Linux platform.

Hopefully their support staff as still as clued up.

HTH

 

The router was current technology in 2002, so 802.11b. The USB adapter from
Linksys is an .11b bought in 2005, so fine for me but not sexy enough for
most people, hence the bargain bin. They had some laptop PC card things for
the same price at the time IIRC.

 

Is that under Linux only or Linux and XP?

I've got a bunch of WG511 v1 cards which work fine under XP with WPA
enabled but are a tad annoying to get to work under Ubuntu with WPA as
they don't do hardware WPA so you've got to fiddle around with
wpa_supplicant.

That said, they do work reliably with WPA under both OSs, it's just
that due to some issues with Ubuntu 7.04, you have to resort to
command line h4x0ry to get them to connect...

Anyway, the 511 v2 is supposed to not suffer from this problem. If you
want to borrow one of the v1 cards to try them out, I should have one
back in the UK. Drop me a line if you're interested and I'll try to
find it when I'm back.

 

Pheenet? Whoo?

Cheers.

 

Under XP. Not tried them under linux, but apparently it's a problem due to
the chipset used on the V3 board, which is different to both V1 and V2. IMO
different chipset = completely different board, and should be a different
model number - I bought these on the basis of review which were about 90%
excellent (for the V1 and V2) and 10% poor, all for the V3, which obviously
gave a good average review score on the site I bought them from.

Could do. I'm rushed off my feet ATM so wouldn't be wanting to set it up
for a while yet.