Client cards

Card Advice: I (Bob) have come across three types of 802.11b cards. Products with a specific brand fall into one of these three categories:

• Prism-2 - These are the "cheap" cards from SMC, D-Link, Linksys, Zoom, Actiontec, Senao, and many others. The Senao SL-2511CD PLUS EXT2 is popular because of its 200 mW output power and high receive sensitivity. I have seen ordinary cards advertised as low as $28. They are called Prism2 after the name of the chipset that these manufacturers use, which is by Intersil/Harris. The advantage to these cards, other than price, is the large number of utility applications for them under Linux/Unix, and drivers that allow the card to be used, with Linux, as an Access Point. The performance of cards based on the Prism2 chipset can vary quite a bit, some being quite poor. This is both in terms of transmit (TX) power, and receive (RX) sensitivity. Actual manufacturer's specifications on RX sensitivity have been collected at FreeNetworks.Org. Note that these are published specification and haven't been independently tested. I don't know of such a chart for TX power, but have been collecting information myself and such a chart may appear here in the future. Here is a list of Prism2 cards which have external antenna connectors, and other information.
• Lucent Orinoco - This series of cards has a confusing set of names, but if you see Lucent, Avaya, Wavelan, or Orinoco (and sometimes Proxim, see next paragraph), this is usually what is meant. These use the lucent "Hermes" chipset, also used in the EnteraSys RoamAbout (The RoamAbout line was formerly owned by Cabletron, and before that Digital Equipment Corp.), Buffalo Technology, and Gateway Solo 5350 cards. The cards have better RX sensitivity than many Prism2 cards I have seen. Lucent has been doing wireless networking for years, and they have a well developed product. What's also useful is that all of these cards have an antenna connector. Unfortunately, they are non-standard and quite small (they are a subtilely modified version of the MC-CARD connector). Adapter cables are available. The 64 bit (Silver) version of these cards can be had inexpensively from several vendors listed at PriceWatch (I suggest looking at the total cost, after shipping, and not just the lowest listed price). I have seen the Silver cards as low as $61 here.

  Proxim: In June of 2002, Proxim Acquired Agere's Orinoco division. Agere will evidently continue to sell 802.11 technology (but maybe not cards?) itself. What this means for the future of "Hermes" technology is not known.

• Cisco Aironet - The highest performance is from the Cisco Aironet cards. This unfortunately comes at a higher price. The least I have ever seen a client card for is $99. The older series is the 340 series. The newer 350 series cards are slightly better. Cisco's nomenclature for their cards: PCM in the model number means integrated antenna and no external antenna connectors, whereas LCM in the model number means no integrated antenna but external antenna connectors. These cards may also be resold by other vendors. For instance, the Dell 4800LT is an Aironet AIR-PCM-340.

adding an external antenna connector to the SMC 2632W

If you aren't fortunate enough to have the Cisco Aironet LCM-342/352, which has external antenna connectors, you can add an external antenna "pigtail" to the standard PCM-342/352

ZoomAir - the ZoomAir 4002 (older Prism1 based, 2 mbps card) comes with a reverse SMA connector (connector is fragile, be careful). These cards were the cheapest available cards on ebay for a while. The more common ZoomAir 4000 comes without an external connector, but there are instructions for an ugly modification here.