Usable WIFI card: PCi or USB

[James Knott]

Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> Duncan> Can anyone recommend a currently available 802.11b or 802.11g
> Duncan> PCI or USB card, for which there is a working Linux driver?  I
> Duncan> understand about avoiding Broadcom chipsets, and I have tried
> Duncan> using gear with a Prism 2.5 chipset, but I have concluded that I
> Duncan> need to know current working devices by model number and
> Duncan> version. What do you guys have working?
> 
> Not what you want to hear, but:
> 
> When I was all excited about wireless 2 years ago and wanted to put my
> under-desktop on a wireless network, I found it hard just like you did.
> Eventually I bought a Linksys wireless-ethernet bridge.  That way
> I connected to the wlan with my ethernet card.
> 
> The bridge was ridiculously expensive (cost more than the wireless
> router) but otherwise I'd probably have bought at least one wlan card
> which wouldn't work so it would've come to the same thing.
> 

What I did at home was buy a cheap WiFi router, which then plugs into
it's own NIC on my firewall.  Since it's on the "hostile" side the
firewall, I use a VPN to access my network via WiFi.  This method is far
more secure than WEP, which I also use, or WPA.  Anyone who manages to
break WEP, will then be up against my firewall and unable to reach my
local network.  With the same VPN, I can also have remote access from
elsewhere, via the internet.

Incidentally, I use OpenVPN, which is included with many Linux distros
and is also available for Windows.


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