Apr 20 2007

100% linux compatiable wireless

Category: Linux,Techerm @ 9:48 am

Recently I was looking for a wireless card that would work 100% of the time in linux.

I had a linksys WUSB54GC, and it barely worked.

Granted this may not be what everyone wants, but non-the-less it is a 100% compatible option for linux, and fairly cheap.
I got a Buffalo WHR-G54S, well 2 actually. My total investment was about $105 with tax.

The difference between these routers compared to your normal wireless router is one can contact the other without being physically connected. “Wireless access point.”

Wonderful words for those of us who have been reading lists and lists of linux compatible wireless cards/usb devices.

I was going around to various stores writing make/model numbers looking for a ubuntu compatible device.

The bad news is you’ll want to call tech support to bridge them, it’s not exactly spelled out in the pdf that comes on the CD. Truth be known if they would have wasted the money to give you a physical copy vs putting it on the CD I probably wouldn’t have called them. This kind of information is just easier to read in book form.

Another nice thing about getting these things is there are 4 ports … just like a normal router, so you can set up 4 computers on one router.

I like this option vs getting a wifi usb/pci card because you don’t have to think … will this work.

There’s no compiling, no endless reading of manuals nothing. Just waste the time to call tech support, and you’re off. Once we got that set up I was able to transfer the .com to the new router, and I had a wireless connection in the garage to boot.

This is obviously not the best choice for those of you who want to run wifi on a laptop, but if you have a desktop, don’t waste your time getting anything but one of these.

It’s great that you don’t have to install any special software to waste your cpu, it’s all taken care of by the browser.

Another nice thing is you can assign your local ips according to their mac address. I’ve been setting static ips in my local network due to the fact all I had was a switch, and not a router. All the other routers I had didn’t allow this option either because they were voip routers.

If you’re thinking of getting a wireless card waste the extra cash, and get one of these. They are nice …

What I don’t know

I’m not sure if this thing will be a bridge to any device you want. I’m 85% sure that it would bridge with my other wifi router, but haven’t attempted it. As an added bonus you can extend your wireless coverage with one of these if you do have a laptop.

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