Finding a wireless lan card

[Mike Meyer]

I recently asked for help finding a wireless lan card. I got a couple
of solid suggestions, some suggestions on buying a "wireless ethernet
bridge", and a "wireless lan master list" for Linux systems. Since my
solution was none of the above, I wanted to post it so it would show
up in the search engines.

The Linux wireless lan master list was rather long, and turned out to
be pretty useless. Some of the chipsets listed don't have FreeBSD
drivers; some of the drivers FreeBSD has aren't on that list. Further,
as others noted here, sonme some of the manufacturers rev chipsets -
or even change chipsets completely(!) without changing the product
identification.

What I wound up doing was buying a Wireless Access Point from Linksys,
which could be set to "bridge mode". Turns out it only bridges to
products from the same company. It does, however, have an "AP client"
mode that doesn't have that restriction. That lets me survey the local
wireless networks, chose one, and connect to it. Worked like a charm.

	<mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.