Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 00:36:52 -0400 (EDT) From: "Dan Ts'o" <dan@dna.tsolab.org> To: manek@ecst.csuchico.edu (Sameer R. Manek) Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: affordable wireless Message-ID: <200009040436.e844avI17647@dna.tsolab.org> In-Reply-To: <LMEMIKHGPPEEMMMMGIENMEKJCAAA.manek@ecst.csuchico.edu> from "Sameer R. Manek" at Sep 3, 0 08:07:38 pm
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> > Does anyone have any suggestions on how to have 802.11 wireless for home > users? Naturally it should be supported by FreeBSD. Configuruation can be > done on any pc os though. > > My only affordable solution so far is to use the Apple AirPort base station, > and wavelan pcmcia cards, but I don't know if they can co-exist, and the > AirPort needs a Macintosh to configure. My idea of affordable for this is > less then $500, the lucent wavelan solution works out to about $900 startup, > that's a little out of my budget. > I have pretty much done all of the above and it works fine. To wit: 1) it is not true that you need a MAC to configure the Airport, there are at least two to three alternatives, including a Jave configurator and a Windows program, Freebase. I have used both. You can find out about it all at www.macwindows.com. 2) The Airport really is a great product, combining a 56K modem, 10baseT port, router, NAT, DHCP and wireless for $300. It works very well and is flexible enough to do just about any combination you can think of. 3) Lucent Wavelan cards (Silver) interoperate great with the Airport. To run them on a "desktop" (Windows or FreeBSD), you will want the Lucent PC card to ISA adapter (I didn't try the PCI versiom having heard more config problems with it). It works fine with FreeBSD 4.0. I also did not try FreeBSD on a laptop with Wavelan. The Airport is $300. The Wavelan Silvers are $160. The ISA adapter is $60. So it is pretty affordable... Also neat are the Farallon Homeline products, particularly the Ethernet to Homeline adapter. With them, you can run Ethernet compatible networking across the phone lines in your house. I have the Airport connected to a Homeline adapter and a DSL line feeding another Homeline unit several rooms away. In a big house, you can use this to extend the wireless range without running cables anywhere. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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