Are all cards equal, or are some better?

[Slim1705]

Does anyone know of any testing that's taken place for different 802.11b cards to see which ones are 'better'?

I heard somewhere that cards tend to work best with the same-brand WAP.

I'm trying to buy a card to browse on a friends network, and obviously want to buy the best one (for the least price, of course).

Comments, discussion, remarks??

Thanks
S.

[mupdike]

Slim,

You are gonna get different replies from different people. My opinion, the best cards are the cisco or orinoco cards. I have read tests that show the range of the orinoco cards beat all the 'lower' brands like linksys, d-link, etc... Notice the quotes there, b/c I have a orinoco card in my laptop, and d-link access point, and a linksys card in my wifes laptop all working without any hitches/glitches in my home. There is no noticable difference in the house, and you will only see one getting into fringe areas where the orinoco will hold 11 a couple of feet longer at best.

All this being said, if you are using for home based browsing you will be safe going with the card you can get the best deal off of.
Good Luck.

[rrfield]

I am using a D-Link WAP here at work. One wireless NIC, the D-Link DWL-120 USB has much less range with this WAP then do the Oronico wireless NICs that come with the newer Gateway laptops. We also have a Compaq wireless NIC that performs at about the same level as the Oronico NIC.

So D-link NIC to D-link WAP doesnt work as well as Oronico or Compaq NICs to D-link WAP.

rrfield

[Slim1705]

Hi rrfield,

Thanks a heap! That was exactly what I was looking for!

Cheers,
S.

[MoleStrangler]

All 802.11b cards are equal in that they are have to comply to the sane IEEE 802.11b standard.

What makes the difference is:

o Quality of the driver
o How much work is done in hardware or in the driver

The cheaper the driver the more work is completed in the driver, so the more work the PC has to do. The better cards implement more in hardware so can operate faster.

The more functionallity on the driver the more the card has to issue an IRQ to the PC to execute the driver. Some cards are just plain BAD, other are better.

This is standard good/bad driver development stuff that applies to most drivers, esp. cheap Ethernet cards that are generally crap. More in the hardware the faster the TX/RX you get out of it.

Thats also why high end server network cards are so expensive, small driver, big on hardware.

o Quality of the antenna

Most PC-Card stub antennas operate the same there is very little differrenbce there, the antenna on the Access Point is also important

o Quailtiy of Access Point

Its like the Pc-Card driver.

The best driver I have found is the Proxim, well they have been developing wireless drivers since the mid 90s, the roaming algorithm is just so good. Orinocco are also ok.

[dmascot]

Is it possible to use, lets say an Orinoko access point or wireless card driver with Linksys hardware?

[color_copier]

Hi, I am new here. So here goes my first post.

I use the D-Link DI-614+ router/AP and DWL-650+ PC card. From what I have experienced they work great together. Especially the TI ships that enable 22Mbps speeds. So when I am far away fromt he router/not getting the best of signal strength I still get 11Mbps. I have also used the 650+ with other WLANs and it has worked great so far.

My 2 cents.

[JS7773]

dmascot>

There should be no problem with that setup. At home I have a SMC WAP and a SMC PC card, an orinoco gold PC card, and a linksys cf card operating just fine on the same WLAN.

I have noticed that I get better signal off of the orinoco gold card than either of the other two cards.

I also have a friend with a D-link pc card that comes over and surfs no problem on my network (and vice-versa I can surf on his D-link AP with no problem)

[RandyW]

I'd like to mention that power consumption is a key factor in choosing an 802.11b NIC and as far as I understand, the Agere chipset present in ORiNOCO cards has the lowest power consumption compared to Intersil and TI based NICs.

[computeradam]

At the Moment I have a:
WPC11 and WPC11 V3.0 Used with a With a Linksys Wireless Router

I get about 20 feet more with WPC11 V3.0

I have ordered and am waiting on my Avaya (Orinoco)Gold card and also an Avaya (orinoco) USB Gold Reciever.

I have also ordered an Avaya 12db gain 120 degree Antenna to hook up to my Linksys Router to see how well that goes.

As soon as I test it I will post results.

[nicky]

Is it not possible that a lot of different brands of cards come from the same supplier / manfacturer

[RandyW]

It is true that many of the vendors use the same suppliers resulting in very similar cards. In the 802.11b space, there are primarily three providers, Agere, TI, and Intersil. Intersil has created several versions of their chipset throughout the years that has different levels of performance and functionality at different price points. If there are questions about individual chipsets, maybe I or somebody else can answer them.

Agere chipsets can be found in ORiNOCO, Avaya, Toshiba, Dell, old Apple as well as some others. Linksys, old D-Link, SMC, Cisco (I think), and many others use Intersil chips. TI is relatively new to the game but has made some headway with it's 802.11b+ branded products sold by D-Link.

Each vendor will either purchase a full design from a supplier and OEM it or purchase a reference design. Intersil and TI tend to go with the reference design model, Agere OEM's more designs. You should see less variation with Agere based NICs then Intersil and TI based. When a reference design is used, some vendors will spend more or less time optimizing a design for their performance, power consumption, and cost requirements. As an example, some vendors offer different transmit power levels up to 20 dBm, which is not necessarily a feature on the reference design.