[aklug] Re: 802.11g with WPA

On Monday 28 January 2008, Lee wrote:
> Couple of points re: wireless.
>
> Wireless is one of the two areas where the linux/unices fall down very
> badly. Not the fault of the linux developers; this one can squarely be
> laid at the vendors' doorsteps with their absolute to release the
> pertinent specs. In fact the developers have done marvelous work
> trying to reverse engineer stuff, nonetheless wireless is still a
> massive problem.
>
> WPA is usually implemented using on-chip functionality, so it's chip
> dependent. Old chips don't have it, and can't use it. wpa_supplicant
> probably won't have the proper calls for newer or less common chipsets.
>
> Many vendors will change designs and chipsets without notice, and
> without changing the model number (or even rev number) of the device.
> Belkin, Dlink and Netgear are especially bad about this. Good luck
> with this. Google is your friend.
>
> 20% of what you'll read in google is crap. 70% is obsolete.
>
> Best luck (and it is luck) seems to be with atheros chipsets (they use
> the mad_wifi drivers). I've also had fair luck with the zd1211 chipset
> based stuff. Poor luck with ralink. Don't know about the onboard
> intel stuff in laptops.
>
> wpa_supplicant does not always stay current with the latest chipset
> drivers, and that can be extremely painful.
>
> Be prepared for long frustrating worksessions.
>
> Once you find a combo that works -DON'T CHANGE IT! until you absolutely
> positively will-not-boot-otherwise have to.

People will still get in one last tweak before ...ack !!

I have pci atheros wifi card in a desktop. The drivers are part of the
kernel. I think this happened around 2.6.22 or whatever the LAtest Ubuntu
is.

-- 
Greg Madden
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