Wireless card for freebsd

[Bryan Vyhmeister]

On Friday, April 25, 2003, at 12:16 AM, ydg wrote:

> I currently have FreeBSD 4.8 running on my laptop. I would like to try 
> wireless access. Someone has suggested the Orinoco cards. However 
> reading thru the archives looks like it might only support adhoc mode? 
> I would like a card that can do both adhoc and bss.

Orinoco cards work fine. They support both adhoc and bss mode. I have 
been using them for years now.

> The handbook says a card using a Prism chipset will work as an access 
> point.
> Any recommendations on a good card to go with?

I started with Orinoco cards but I am now using mostly EnGenius cards. 
They are 200 mW instead of the 30 mW of the Orinoco cards. They have 
excellent range and work very well as a client card or as an access 
point. I am running one as an access point in my house right now using 
a PCI adapter and FreeBSD 5.0. The EnGenius cards are available from:

http://www.netgate.com/

They are slightly more expensive than Orinoco cards these days but they 
are worth it in my opinion!

> Sorry if this is a repeated question. I did some searching in the 
> archives and google, and didnt find anything too solid, figured id go 
> to a more direct source :)

There was a message about this on April 21 but that wouldn't have made 
it into Google yet most likely. It is as follows:

> From: Bryan Vyhmeister <bsd at hub3.net>
> Date: Mon Apr 21, 2003  10:09:05 PM US/Pacific
> To: "Remington L." <madriax at garlic.com>, freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: Compatible wireless nic
>
> On Monday, April 21, 2003, at 09:51 PM, Remington L. wrote:
>
>> I will be implementing a wireless LAN within the next few weeks. I 
>> will
>> have FreeBSD 5.0 as the server. It will be acting as the default 
>> gateway
>> to the internet and as a WAP. From your guys experiences what are some
>> good PCI 802.11b wireless cards? (full BSD compatible is a must of
>> course)
>
> I am presently running a Senao/EnGenius 200mW 802.11b wireless card 
> inside a PCI adapter in a VIA C3 800 MHz mini-ITX system. It runs 
> FreeBSD 5.0 and is my access point at home. It runs very well. I 
> highly recommend the Senao/EnGenius cards. The cards work great in 
> FreeBSD 4.7, 4.8, and 5.0. I got my cards from:
>
> http://www.netgate.com/
>
> As a side note, I could not get FreeBSD 4.7 or 4.8 to recognize the 
> PCI adapter properly but 5.0 works like a charm. Hope that helps.

Hope that gives you some ideas.

Bryan