EighTT

Let me start off by thanking everyone for the good advice offered previously. I think TTP and someone else gave me a good suggestion when they said that 802.11a is probably the best way to go. That made sense to me, however, I went with 802.11b due to cost. The 802.11a stuff is still fairly pricey, and I figure I can trade up later when the costs are presumably lower, if I so desire.

I was able to get a Linksys WAP11 for $95, which seemed like a good price. Now I need to get a PC/pcmcia card.

The question is, should I stick with a Linksys product such as the WPC11, or are all of these cards pretty much interchangable? Any pluses or minuses about going with the same or a different brand. Again, TIA!

StoneymonsTTer

I'm using an SMC access point with a cisco
pcmcia card on one laptop and a cabletron
on the other. Everything works peachy.
Here's to standardization

-C

SecuriTT

for like $79.99.

dloftis

Some tend to have better radio and/or antennas.

juliem

As stoney sez, they are interchangeable - one note however. If you wish to use encryption, be sure that all devices support both the number of bits you want (64 or 128 is how they describe it) and that the method of specifing the key is the same. IE some devices let you specify a pass phrase - a real serious of characters and some require and octal or hexadecimal number. Linksys cards for win2k and XP allow either but DLink only allowed for the numeric key. At least the version I had. A bit of a pain when I wanted a nice 'memorable' password.

FYI the WEP key security is by no means 100% but it's better than nothing...

my $.02

dloftis

Just (don't ask me the math behind it) convert your string into the hex key string.

juliem

yup - it's just a pain to do it by hand