802.11g card shopping

[jkoon]

So I am currently shopping for a new wireless 802.11g card for my laptop. Anyone have any recommendations?

[RobertH]

your best bet for speed/compatibility/ecryption would be to get the same manufacturer as your base station or other wireless adapters if you are going adhoc

[jkoon]

Oh yea, guess I should have mentioned I’m using a Linksys WRT54G.

[exorcism]

Yeah, getting all the same brand helps a lot. I've had good and (unexplainably) bad experiences with Netgear and Linksys. If you don't have to go more than 600 ft in any particular direction, have cash to burn, and need the most speed you can (like watching divx movies over the network) you can dish out for 802.11a (5ghz, upto 108mbps (I think netgear has one this fast, others are upto like 72mbps)) as for security, almost no one uses 802.11a, it doesn't have a huge range, and I think it's encryption may be better.

BTW, encryption slows down the wireless network a lot. We tested 802.11b at 11mbps here, and with no encryption our peak thruput was about 5mbps, with 64bit it was 3mpbs, and with 128bit it was 1mbps.

edit: Then get a linksys card

[ynnek888]

If you get linksys G router, get the latest firmware upgrade.. Glancing at the release notes, they mention in the previous vers encription reduced performance.. the latest ones supposidly fix that... Also, for some reason , I couldn't get encryption and MAC filtering working beforehand with the old factory firmware..

Thru opposite ends of the house and different floors(small house too), I only get about 11 to 28 mbits, according to Windows, with 128 bit encyription.. I think I'm getting alot of interfernce from neighbors, because the signal strength varies alot during the day/night.. I actually can see my neighbors router from my PC!

So I'd try it out first, make sure there is no restocking fee on returning stuff.

Thats my experience with the Linksys G router and PCI G card.. Didn't try any other brands though.