I am looking for a good Wi-Fi PCI card for my desctop and MINI-PCI for my laptop.

Which are the best?

What is the difference between 811.b and 811.g or something like that...

Note, I am not talking about PC Cards. I am talking PCI cars that slide into mobos.

ThankS!

 

You got PM.

Jon

 

8.11g is faster (54 Mbs), but if it's just for the net 8.11b (11 Mbs) is fine.

I find that 8.11b has a much greater range than the 8.11g, this is probably due to the increase in speed decreases noise tolerance. 8.11b requires a signal to noise ratio of approx 40 db, I don't have the specs for g, but I expect it must be even higher, since the distance falls off so quickly vs b.

They both use 2.4 Ghz, so if you are using other 2.4 Ghz devices in your home such as wireless telephones, headsets etc, then you will have a higher noise floor and this will decrease the range of the wifi connection....

One more point, if you have an RF noisy area, your wifi may have a very short range, even if none of the other appliances are 2.4 Ghz.

Just some stuff to think about, oh yeah, G is backwards compatable to B.

Back to your question, I haven't had any wifi NIC failures on any brand, but I'm partial to Linksys because they are very easy to setup. NOTE: Please get a USB Wifi device for you desktop - this will allow you some ability to relocate the antennea, the PCI board has the antenna mounted on it. You will be much happier with an antenna that you can mount a little higher than a PCI card that is mounted behind your computer on the floor.

I bought the Linksys "b" for my laptop because I want the increased noise tolerance. I bought the Linksys USB "b" for my desktops.

Good Luck!

 

I brought a Netgear 8.11g for my laptop because I figure that most of the places will upgrade the router to 8.11g sooner or later. Plus, I can use it as a 8.11b anyways.
BTW--- I tried Linksys but it didn’t work for my laptop

 

I'll second the use of a USB wireless network adaptor for the PC's. The PCI based cards tend to get really crappy reception because the antenna is so low.

-Brian

 

+1 for USB on t3h desktop PC.
If you have a mini-PCI slot on your laptop, get the intel IPW2200. It works in both Linux and windows really well. =) Unless of course you want to use airsnort, then you'll want to get an orinoco card.

bring your cusco car to my house and I will show you all my t3h cool wifi gear. ;D

Say good bye to 2.4GHz cordless phones too.

lucent, cisco, linksys, netgear tend to all be good cards.
Cisco and lucent cards usually have the best client side antenna/wattage, so you will be able to be further from the WAP.

 

Yeah if you decide to go G which you should, it will probably be a god idea to dump the 2.4Ghz phone if you have that. Doesn't happen all the time but I used to get dropped calls while working on my laptop or walking by the access point.

Also +1 for the Intel IPW2200 mini PCI

 

Speaking about geeks ... I hear many problems with phpBB and a lot of security leaks - maybe you should look into this and update quickly before your server gets owned .... Like mine did. Just a thought



[edit]--sorry to steal your thread mang

 

I bought a usb wireless card. If you are looking for one card to use for both, that's a good option.

You'll definitely find a lot of Airlink products at Fry's for next to nothing (my router was $20 and my usb wireless card was $15). They've both been working very poorly. I would NOT suggest buying airlink.

For the most part, wireless cards are pretty universally good, unless they are total POS

 

i.e. Airlink

 

I don't know about y'all, but I get about 700k via DSL, so unless you have a connection over 11Mbps, it doesn't matter.

I like Linksys stuff, personally.

 

true, but if you move a lot of files between computers, 802.11g tends to have a higher sustained transfer rate if you have good signal throughout the location. using 802.11b right now and i kind of wish i just went with 802.11g since 3 other people in the house play games, transfer files, etc...

 

-100 for linksys stuff, the connection is REAL bad in with various locations I have tried and configurations...etc. After a while, I got it to work ok, but it would go down once a week maybe? still it took a lot of free time, research and tinkering to get the physical location right and the whole set up right. My uncle's linksys wireless sucks major ***** too.

 

Alex,

I'm running d-link router and wi-fi cards. I've worked w/ Linksys and I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan of netgear either. I've worked w/ all three setting them up for people. I have a wi fi pci card on my desktop.

 

One downside of linksys is that they are so common that you will often get signals from multiple neighbors. You definitely want to change your SSID and enable some sort of security, too, unless you want other people using your bandwidth of course.