wireless USB adapters recommendations?

wireless USB adapters recommendations?

[Tomasz Chmielewski]

I'm looking for a USB wireless adapter which is well supported under Linux.

Requirements:

- WPA2
- should support ad-hoc and access point modes
- should work under mipsel (I had once a prism54 mini-PCI card which 
didn't work under mipsel)

It would be also nice to to get the hardware from a producer which 
cooperates with Linux community.

Do you guys have any recommendations?


-- 
Tomasz Chmielewski
http://wpkg.org

Re: wireless USB adapters recommendations?

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

On Sat, 02 Aug 2008 20:50:31 +0200, Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:

> I'm looking for a USB wireless adapter which is well supported under
> Linux.
> 
> Requirements:
> 
> - WPA2
> - should support ad-hoc and access point modes - should work under
> mipsel (I had once a prism54 mini-PCI card which didn't work under
> mipsel)
> 
> It would be also nice to to get the hardware from a producer which
> cooperates with Linux community.
> 
> Do you guys have any recommendations?

Your requirements are mutually exclusive at the moment. Here is what the 
FSF says on the matter:
http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/net/wireless/cards.html
Access-point mode is now dependent upon nl80211, which isn't finished yet.

Re: wireless USB adapters recommendations?

[Johannes Berg]

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On Sat, 2008-08-02 at 19:09 +0000, Daniel Gimpelevich wrote:

> > I'm looking for a USB wireless adapter which is well supported under
> > Linux.

> > - WPA2
> > - should support ad-hoc and access point modes - should work under
> > mipsel (I had once a prism54 mini-PCI card which didn't work under
> > mipsel)

Didn't work under mipsel seems fixable, should be a driver issue.

> Your requirements are mutually exclusive at the moment. Here is what the 
> FSF says on the matter:
> http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/net/wireless/cards.html

I wouldn't be too sure the FSF is a good source of information regarding
wireless on Linux (or of anything about Linux for that matter). And the
list is, indeed, rather incomplete and gives a very skewed picture.

On the other hand, I don't think there are any USB devices that support
AP mode.

> Access-point mode is now dependent upon nl80211, which isn't finished yet.

Patience. It will be soon.

johannes

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Re: wireless USB adapters recommendations?

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

On Sat, 02 Aug 2008 21:17:33 +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:

> I wouldn't be too sure the FSF is a good source of information regarding
> wireless on Linux (or of anything about Linux for that matter). And the
> list is, indeed, rather incomplete and gives a very skewed picture.

I wasn't saying otherwise; I clearly qualified it as what *they* say.

> On the other hand, I don't think there are any USB devices that support
> AP mode.

With nl80211 they will, at least on rt73usb and rtl8187.

Re: wireless USB adapters recommendations?

[Tomasz Chmielewski]

Daniel Gimpelevich schrieb:
> On Sat, 02 Aug 2008 20:50:31 +0200, Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:
> 
>> I'm looking for a USB wireless adapter which is well supported under
>> Linux.
>>
>> Requirements:
>>
>> - WPA2
>> - should support ad-hoc and access point modes - should work under
>> mipsel (I had once a prism54 mini-PCI card which didn't work under
>> mipsel)
>>
>> It would be also nice to to get the hardware from a producer which
>> cooperates with Linux community.
>>
>> Do you guys have any recommendations?
> 
> Your requirements are mutually exclusive at the moment.

Obviously, it doesn't have to support both ad-hoc and access point modes 
at the same time if that's what you mean ;)


> Here is what the 
> FSF says on the matter:
> http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/net/wireless/cards.html

According to that page, there are only two supported USB adapters... at 
least when you search for the "USB" string.


> Access-point mode is now dependent upon nl80211, which isn't finished yet.

So, there is no wireless USB adapter working with Linux supports access 
point mode now, because some parts of nl80211 are not ready yet?

I see nl80211 is in vanilla kernel now; what features still lack to 
provide access point functionality (to wireless USB adapters)? Any time 
frames (2.6.28? later?)?


-- 
Tomasz Chmielewski
http://wpkg.org

Re: wireless USB adapters recommendations?

[Tomasz Chmielewski]

Johannes Berg schrieb:
> On Sat, 2008-08-02 at 19:09 +0000, Daniel Gimpelevich wrote:
> 
>>> I'm looking for a USB wireless adapter which is well supported under
>>> Linux.
> 
>>> - WPA2
>>> - should support ad-hoc and access point modes - should work under
>>> mipsel (I had once a prism54 mini-PCI card which didn't work under
>>> mipsel)
> 
> Didn't work under mipsel seems fixable, should be a driver issue.

Yeah, I tested it with 2.6.19 some time ago.

Maybe the things are better now with the current kernel - I'll check it 
next week - and if it works, I won't need a USB device ;)


-- 
Tomasz Chmielewski
http://wpkg.org

Re: wireless USB adapters recommendations?

[Johannes Berg]

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On Sat, 2008-08-02 at 21:27 +0200, Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:

> So, there is no wireless USB adapter working with Linux supports access 
> point mode now, because some parts of nl80211 are not ready yet?
> 
> I see nl80211 is in vanilla kernel now; what features still lack to 
> provide access point functionality (to wireless USB adapters)? Any time 
> frames (2.6.28? later?)?

I'd expect .28, but cannot say for sure. It actually works right now,
but has some non-standards-compliant behaviour wrt. basic rates and
slot/rts/cts configuration, which is why you need a small patch to
enable it.

johannes

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