Notes on various 802.11 Wireless Adapters
| Vendor | Model | Driver Version | Comments | |
| D-Link | DWL-122 (USB/802.11b) |
3.1.3 (10/2/2003) |
Mostly works ok. Some issues with reliable site scan. Will often report no APs even though there are some in range. Has relatively poor range but is very small and easy to carry around. |  |
| D-Link | DWL-AG660 (PC-Card/802.11 a/b/g) |
Good range and speed. Has some problems with reporting RSS on APs other than the one associated with. |  |
|
| LinkSys | WUSB54GP (USB/802.11b/g) |
Excellent adapter. Works well in all situations. Great packaging with bendable USB connector and adjustable antenna. Great range and speed. (My favorite adapter - looks cool as well.) |  |
|
| NETGEAR | MA521 (PC-Card/802.11b) |
Solid performance in spite of an antenna protrusion of only about 1.5 cm. |  |
|
| Hawking | HWU54D (USB/802.11b/g) |
USB adapter with built-in high gain (6 dBi) directional antenna. Very neat design and great performance. Must be pointed at the AP or will usually not pick it up but will work out to several hundred meters or more. Best range of any USB adapter tested so far. My only complaint is that the antenna doesn't swivel, it just moves up and down. |  |
|
| Orinoco (Proxim) |
Orinoco Gold (PCMCIA/802.11b) |
7.43.0.9 | A classic originally from Lucent (now Proxim). One of the best 802.11b cards ever. Great range and has an external antenna connector (MC-type). |  |
| SMC | SMC2532W-B (PC-Card/802.11b) |
2.0.9.0 | Unfortunately not a good choice. In spite of having the promise of great range due to a 200 mW power output and optional external antenna, this card simply does not work correctly. Along with being very difficult to install the drivers under XP the RSS values reported are bogus. Even Netstumber has problems with this card. Reports RSSI that are about 20 dBm higher than other cards. Has an annoying habit of reporting "phantom" APs when scanning that have a BSSID of 00-00-00-00-00-00. |  |
| Netgate (Senao) |
2511-EXT2 (PC-Card/802.11b) |
8.0.2 | Another 200 mW power output card with
external antenna. Using a +12dBi Yagi antenna you can pull in a
wireless AP 1000m or more away. Very cool. Unfortunately as with
the SMC card, this one also misreports the RSSI. Typical values are in
the +40 to +90 dBm mode which are ridiculous (and potentially fatal if
accurate. +90 dBm is 10^9 mW or 1,000,000 Watts! Ouch...).
Hopefully the vendor will update the NDIS driver on this card to report the RSSI correctly. (To support this card I've added code to the application to subtract 100 dBm from any RSSI indication above +0dBm. This seems to put the output from this card in the same range as similar cards.) |
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