[Eug-lug] Wireless... WOO HOO!

[Linux Rocks!]

So... Ive been waiting a bit to announce that Ive been messing with the 
wireless stuff, and so far things look pretty good.

I have 3 types of wireless cards, and so far the 2 ive setup work real nice 
under linux. I did have problems though...
I have a Netgear 614(v2) wireless G router/gateway.  been using it for about 6 
months w/out issue. About 1/2 hour after getting wireless g working on slack 
10, my router barfed (it was really frustrating, it would drop internet, and 
web interface (192.168.0.1) connection (but otherwise continue to work (I had 
local networking...). Ive spent a few hours over the last week trying to fix 
the router, but a flash upgrade gone bad completely hozed it.... Still 
waiting to hear from netgear (theyre support really sucks. did you know that 
you only get phone support for the first 90 day??? after that you have to pay 
for support (even to just get an RMA!!!!) with your credit card, or send 
email (however, sending email has not helped at all... they havnt replied to 
either mail I've sent and its been over a week now...)
I'd have to say dont buy netgear!!! they dont support thier products, and  
they cant make a router that last more than 6 months... 

So... I got a Linksys WRT54G wireless router :)  I havnt messed with it much 
(just set it up and use it...) however you can get the source, and compile 
your own OS on this device... I also saw on tv that you can really tweek this 
unit... should be fun...

So back to the subject... after getting a new wireless router (linksys), I was 
able to mess with the wireless again :) I currently have 2 wireless nics 
working. One is the centrino based one, the other is a wireless-G (D-Link 
DWL-G650).

Centrino:
Im using the IPW2100 driver. Ive looked over this driver in the past, and it 
was a bit difficult to understand the installation process (which is why I 
gave up on it back then...). I went to their website, and found that its now 
very easy to build the driver (make, make install). The IPW2100 driver sets 
up eth1 as the networking device, which makes setting up the network a 
automatic process (your regular network script may auto load eth1 also...)
I didnt write down the install process, but it was very very easy (like make, 
make install, network restart)

The next wireless device was the D-Link G650. I used the madwifi driver for 
it, and its working fine too! it was as simple as make, make install, 
modprobe ath_pci, ifconfig ath0 up, dhcpcd ath0

Some tips with wireless ive recently figured out:

us iwconfig to see if you associating good.
use ifconfig <device> to bring up device if you dont see it associating with 
iwconfig. 
Once a device has associated with an access point, treat it just like any 
other network device... real simple.

So far I really like Slackware 10. its been on the lappy for a couple weeks, 
and everything seems to work pretty well (except sound... having some sound 
issues, and mplayer issue (movies dont play through... they get stuck and 
have to pause/unpause a lot...)

Jamie
-- 
Linux!  Guerrilla UNIX Development     Venimus, Vidimus, Dolavimus.
	-- Mark A. Horton KA4YBR, mah at ka4ybr.com