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Inexpensive 11megabit Wireless LAN 158

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wireless-equals-good dept.
x mani x writes "Due to recent Apple postings, I noticed something new on their site no one has mentioned yet: 11mbit radio-based NICs and hubs. Of course, something clever like this could only have been developed by Lucent. Oh, they don't cost an arm and a leg either. " I don't see an x86 version, but we need Linux drivers. My 2mbit ZoomAir lan is addictive, but 11mbs will make my mp3s stream in so much quicker :) (Unrelated: This page actually has pics of the new iBook macs too)
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Inexpensive 11megabit Wireless LAN

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  • IEEE 802.11 DSSS Networks (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I found a page for a company called No Wires Needed that supports IEEE 802.11 DSSS for PC's. They have an Open Source Linux driver for one of their cards. Both Apple and No Wires Needed claim their products work (and play well with others) with other IEEE 802.11 DSSS equipment.

    URL for No Wires Needed is:
    http://www.nwn.com/ [nwn.com]
  • Yeah, but the AirCards themselves won't work in a PC notebook -- they can just interchange data with any IEEE 802.11 compliant card in an x86.
  • I wonder what sort of security precautions have been implimented. Imagine cruising around with a laptop and having appleshare access to anyone's computer who didn't know any better than to password protect (most home users).

    Drive by shootings in Quake anyone.

    "Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"

  • That driver is for their 5.5 Mbit product
    (Swallow 550), and should work with their 11 Mbit product as well. (I should know, I am writing the driver :) All that's needed is changing the config for pcmcia.
  • Posted by Sylvar:

    Nope, they haven't fixed it yet. I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one who did a double take.
  • ...and being RF based, it won't be licenced in the UK.....sigh
  • Here is some more info on what this thing can do: http://www.macintouch.com/ny1999wirel ess.html [macintouch.com].
  • Ok, I have been a Mac user since about age 4 and I have NEVER, i repeat NEVER, tried to plug my ethernet into a phone plug. I'm sure it happens, but it happens to peecee users as much as anyone else.

    Tim
  • From the FAQ on Apple's site:

    Q. What kind of security does AirPort provide?

    A. AirPort offers password access control and encryption to deliver security equivalent to that of a physical network cable. Users are required to enter a password to log on to the AirPort network--and, optionally, an additional password for access to any other computer on the network. When transmitting information, AirPort uses 40-bit encryption to scramble data, rendering it useless to eavesdroppers.

  • Re:AirPort Tech info (encryption scheme) (Score:3)

    by matasar ( 8397 ) on Wednesday July 21, 1999 @08:03AM (#1791576) Homepage

    From http://www.apple.com/airport/faq2.html [apple.com]

    Q. What kind of security does AirPort provide?

    A. AirPort offers password access control and encryption to deliver security equivalent to that of a physical network cable. Users are required to enter a password to log on to the AirPort network--and, optionally, an additional password for access to any other computer on the network. When transmitting information, AirPort uses 40-bit encryption to scramble data, rendering it useless to eavesdroppers

  • Linux and 802.11 (Score:4)

    by Kurt Granroth ( 9052 ) on Wednesday July 21, 1999 @08:04AM (#1791577)
    It appears that there is a Linux project to work with the 802.11 standard. Here is the abstract
    The goal of the Linux WLAN project is to develop a complete, standards based, wireless LAN system using the GNU/Linux operating system. What differentiates this project from the Linux wireless extensions and other Linux wireless projects is that we're basing everything on the recently approved IEEE 802.11 standard.
    http://www.absoval.com/linux-wlan/ [absoval.com]
  • The FAQ says 150 feet
  • I could really use a pair of those base units to connect my (10-base-T) LAN to my mother's (obsolete - a.k.a. not supported) Mac, since she insists that the cabel dissapear into the walls (without me tearing up the walls to do this)... Just that $600 for a wireless 10-base-T Point-to-Point connection is too rich for my blood... Any suggestions?
  • You take about a 35% degragation in performance if you setup a repeater... per repeater.

  • I wish I had a picture of mine. It's look more like a datascope with a keyboard, handle, and two 5.25 floppy drives. I don't know how a handle makes a 40 lbs. boat anchor a "portable" machine, but what do you expect of a Trash-80?
  • From your profile and the messeges you have posted here and in the past, it appears you tend to like to post items in a very flaimbaitish mannor. You may want to employ intellegence and courtesy in future postings.

    Other articles do a good job of discussing the claims of the AirPort, so I'm not going to repeat them here.
  • I watched the MacWorld keynote speech live. If you saw them plug it in, you lift up the keyboard, slide the card into what looks like an internal PCMCIA slot (odd that), and then you attach wires from the antenna inside the machine to the card.

    This COULD be just a relabled card. You would have to attach a seperate antenna to the PC version too, right? It depends on whether or not I'm right about the slot it plugs into..
  • The whole candy-colored iMac thing has been more about form than content from the start... if these things work, it'd be a big step towards Dilbertdom taking Apple seriously instead of treating them as toys for the nose-ring brigade. Hell, I might even start buying Apple stuff myself.
  • You are correct, it is backward. I sent the webmaster email about it.
  • Though you can receive signals with just about any type/length of antenna (though antennas tuned for specific frequencies are usually better at it, though few people seem to notice), TRANSMITTING signals is something entirely different. If you attach antennas of the wrong type/length to a transmitter expecting a tuned antenna (usually the antenna that comes with the equipment), you will eventually fry the transmitter.

    Basically radio waves are exactly that: waves. They have a measurable wavelength. Tuned antennas are "tuned" by matching the end of the antenna with the ends of those wavelengths (or some nice fraction thereof). When you transmit, the wave basically travels along the length of the antenna and when it hits the end, *reflects* back (and, as I understand it, a similar effect happens on the opposite end, where the antenna is attached). If everything is nice and in phase, the wave looks and acts really nice and you get a nice strong signal radiated without much of it being reflected back into the equipment. However, with an improperly tuned antenna (for example a TV antenna), you will not get a nice, in-phase reflection and you'll get a significant amount of the signal reflected back into the equipment, which fries it.

    It may not happen immediately, but it will certainly decrease the lifetime of the equipment.

    Bottom line: If you have equipment that transmits RF, don't fuck around with the antenna if you value the equipment.
  • Perhaps they mean it's up to 10 *percent* faster... At 11 Mbps, I can't imagine it being 10 times faster than anything still in common use.

    Anyway, it sounds perfect to me. I just moved into a new house and I really, really don't want to cable it!
  • yeah, I was thinking that $300 was a good deal for a 56K modem, and a router that will do NAT, even without considering that I may want to get a wireless setup later on. See, my NeXT box doesn't do NAT, my Macs aren't stable enough to be my network access point, and PCs are way too ugly for me to buy one just for a router. I did consider a QUBE-2, but $1000 is too much since I don't need to server aspect of it.
  • if I had an Apple.. or one of those bright little iBooks. But seeing as how I don't, and I'm assuming that, it being on Apple's site and all, it works with Apples only. Therefore, I'm wondering, when will the rest of us get one?
  • Anyway, if you've got the AirPort thing in your home, a cracker would likely have to be on your property if ot in your house to compromise it.
    I live in a condo. I have at least twelve neighbors within a 150 ft. radius. Any one of them are in a position to try to break the thing without my knowing.

    If someone other than my neighbors wanted to do it, there are plenty of places within that 150 ft. radius that someone could place equipment to monitor the relevant portion of the spectrum and forward the data elsewhere.

    you can add extra encryption in the application layer.
    That was my whole point. I was replying to someone who essentially claimed that 40-bit encryption is good enough. It isn't.
    I think it would prolly be easier to physically break into your network than reliably and consistantly capture and decrypt AirPort transmissions.
    Easier, definitely. But more likely to be detected. And with a higher risk of legal recourse.

    Nowhere did I say that compromising the AirPort (or any other 802.11 system) would be easy. In the case of AirPort it would probably involve reverse engineering their firmware and using a hacked version to monitor the broadcast data stream (since presumably a standard AirPort won't provide direct access to the encrypted bits). If you think there aren't people out there capable of doing such a thing, you're very much mistaken.

    It's not necessary for the attacker to personally have the skill to do this kind of stuff. All it takes is for one clever person to do it, and for the attacker to buy (or otherwise obtain) the resulting device.

    Am I being paranoid? Yes, of course I am. How can you have any hope of maintaining a secure network unless you are paranoid about possible threat scenarios?

  • two simple words:

    • ECHELON
    • DICTONARY
    oh, crap, i probably just set off what i was talking about. oh well.

    cygnus
    "i feel like a quote out of context."

  • does anyone know of any other cheap solutions currently available for the x86 line? Me and my friends were thinking of setting up a neigborhood lan...man that would be great.
  • After seeing the Apple product I decided to explore things from a Linux/Robotics perspective. I can see where it would be great to have a Linux PC based robot WLAN linked development and control purposes. Check out my WLAN notes [visi.com] for further information. I put the notes together for myself, but am making them available to all.
  • Looks like a pretty cool piece of technology...

    But let's step back from that for a minute and look at Apple on a whole...why do all of thier products look like something out of a cartoon?

    The iMac I understand...attracts customers who don't know much about computers other then "point & click"...but who among them is going to get a hub?
  • Anyone notice the hub? Last time I checked, Ethernet was RJ-45 and modems were RJ-11.
  • ok, it made me put something here.

    "Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"

  • Uhh, ma, it's broke. The network wire don't fit into that little 'ol hole there.

    It's okay, Cleetus, go water the mule.

    'Kay, ma.

  • That is the first thing I noticed. Apple wonders why they had so many problems with the iMacs and the "easy" internet. They were plugging things into the wrong port.
  • You're referring to LocalTalk, which is an implementation of the Appletalk protocol over telehone wire. It's max throughput is 230Kbps. Appletalk is capable of running on Ethernet at much higher speeds. With the newest Appletalk mechansims like AppleshareIP, Appletalk works well even over ATM and gigabit Ethernet.

  • Re:distance? (Score:3)

    by dattaway ( 3088 ) on Wednesday July 21, 1999 @08:22AM (#1791604) Homepage Journal
    If the frequency is known, you could easily build a simple beam antenna. This would perhaps be quite illegal as the beam would be concentrated, but very effective in long distances of a mile or more away. If its in the gigahertz range, one could make a small horn antenna.
  • It's 2.4 GHz. As others have said, the max distance is 150 feet. Basically, it's running on the same base frequency as the high-end phones (they are generally 2.4GHz receive and 900MHz send, but there are exceptions).
  • Just build a Network Interface using an old 486. Maybe Linux in the Network Interface, but that's not important as it's just a network device. Do the real networking in that device. Connect the NT boxes to the nearest Network Interface.
  • This is great technology, and at $300 for a hub and $100 for a card for an iBook, its damn cheap too. This isn't *new* exactly, the IEEE 802.11 standard has been out for a while, but not this cheap, or this fast. I really hope Apple will give this cool tech a kick start into the home market.
    The iBook has a built in antenna, to make this work with a PC or a G3 PowerBook, its going to require an external antena, which doesn't appear to be on the card Apple is selling for the iBook. Here is a card [wavelan.com] that does have it. As well as some cards for desktops (ISA, yuck :-(, at sub 10mbps speeds it doesn't matter I guess) The FAQ says that 11mbps will be available *soon*, I guess that means now, because Apple is releasing theirs, the web page is just not quite up to date.
    I imagine that it wouldn't be *too* difficult for someone to hack up a driver for Linux, especially if its for the ISA card Lucent offers, for those of you who want to network their home without running wires. At $300 for a 10 user hub, its probably cheaper then running wires, unless you REALLY enjoy that sort of thing.

    Spyky
  • There are drivers.

    I have stability problems with 'em, but maybe you'll fare better. :)

    http://www.komacke.com/distribution.html [komacke.com]
  • the airport hubs have 2 prts, an dual mode 10/100 ether net and a seperate built in 56k modem.
  • Serbian Qaddafi FSF cracking quiche echelon counter-intelligence cracking radar Waco Marxist Castro Uzi assassination Clinton smuggle genetic Psix bomb Rule Noriega Delta Force World Trade Center Legion of Doom North Korea Project Bluebook Saddam Hussein explosion Panama Team 6 kibo Semtex China nuclear technology terrorist Honduras FSF cryptography Milosevic domestic disruption CIA...
  • I have used a 2Mb wireless LAN at work for the last year. Not for day-to-day use, but mostly just for bringing laptops to meetings, ocassionally working outside the building, etc. Our wireless LAN is pretty slow, the best transfer rates I've gotten were more along the lines of 500-700kbps (about 60-90KB/sec). I've always wanted to set one up at home, but the costs were prohibitive. Our Netwave hub cost around $1000 and each PC card is around $250. So this new Apple/Lucent setup looks great, I might just buy one.
  • As far as encryption goes, there are some
    02.11 compliant things that use 40bit RC4. But really, its not that big a deal under most settings - as its about as secure as ethernet itself. The intelligent, paranoid consumer will be using encrypted channels (ssh) anyway.

    As far as lectures, etc. At CMU they have an extensive wireless system (wireless andrew, see wavelan.com for a link to an article about it) which will soon be finished being deployed throughout the campus. Already though, one of the large CS lecturehalls has WavePOINT IIs. This, as well as (and a replacement for) a NetBar system that romes your IP.

    But yes, there are nice things about being able to surf during a lecture. And some classrooms being built now (campuses across the country) do have networking infastructures being built in such that teachers can start to take advantage. But wireless stuff is a much better choice, if it does (which it should) become prevalent.

    Glad it uses 802.11. Good stuff. We're probably going to see a heck of a lot of these iBooks on campus in the fall as the network is released...
    Still wouldn't trade my vaio for one, though :)

  • Only Apple is cheaper (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For what I have seen so far Apple's base is about half the price of existing bases for this technology... So this is a good thing...

    You can buy and Apple base station but just have to buy the PC card (I saw some at 300$, ok.. it is more expensive than the 99$ Apple ones but eh!)


    No really.. this is very very good stuff...
  • 3COM has an x86 implementation of IEEE 802.11 called AirConnect [3com.com]
  • The iMac I understand...attracts customers who don't know much about computers other then "point & click"...but who among them is going to get a hub?

    Apple hopes a whole lot of them. In fact, that's their target audience. The point is that Joe Sixpack orders DSL, buys a couple of iBooks and a hub, runs the GUI-based setup tool, and he's got a super-fast, super-reliable network connection. This may be the first real networking for the masses. If Apple's configuration program is as simple as they seem to think it is, pretty much anyone should be able to set up a home network with it.

    Keep in mind that this thing is designed to go with the iBook. The iBook's got the antenna built in, and a $100 card that can be easily added on to enable airport. Then you just plug the hub into either a DSL "modem" or phone line, and you've got yourself wireless internet anywhere in the house. This could be a big hit among consumers. The biggest problem I see is the $2000 total for the computer + card + hub is still a little pricey. But there are still a *lot* of computerless consumers that can afford that if it's compelling enough.
  • Lucent has it's wavelan series of products, and the picture of the Apple "AirPort" looks exactly like the wavelan OEM card with a new label on it.


    Since there are wavelan cards for standard PCI slots and hubs for eithernet available from lucent, all we need is a driver (or at least the specs from lucent) to make it work. Does anyone have a source for either?

  • well for older macs (ones with serial ports) you can piggyback a localtalk connection over regular phone wires. the phone system only uses 2 of the 4 wires. the other 2 can be used by a localtalk network using phonenet adapters from farallon. they're about $8 a piece and all you have to do is get a 4 conductor cable splitter for your phone jacks.
  • I have some cards that work under windows. They're Proxim Rangelan2 [proxim.com], and they do peer-to-peer. 2Mbps max.

    There is unofficial linux driver support for the card, but it's not too reliable in my experience.
  • I imagine the signals are sent in a similar manner to any bus system (like ethernet). This means collisions when the bandwidth is saturated. If you are streaming all the mp3s from the same server, then it shouldn't be too big a problem. Even so, if you actually stream all 47 at the same time, and traffic from the clients (and there will be some) will cause collisions.

    I would estimate that you can only realistically get about half that amount, or 23 or so streams.

    Still, it's pretty good.
  • How different do PCMCIA cards look without extenral wiring or attachments. My ethernet card and my modem are identical, except for the fact that the slot that the wire goes into is to millimeters thinner on one, and that they have different labels, but I am quite sure they are not the same...

    Since apple uses a proprietary attena (sp?) built into the casing, there is nothing particularly interesting (physically) about the card. I'm not saying that they are not the same card, they may well be, but I just think that their physical appearance is not enough to base such a guess on.
  • I think I'll just wait for one of my neighbors to get one and then I can use his bandwidth... I would think in an apartment building or small office complex this could be a real problem. I didn't see any mention of how 2 or more of these devices in close proximity would keep from talking to each other. In any case I bet it won't like vhf/uhf ham gear at all.
  • http://www.farallon.com/ products/wireless/skylinespec.html [farallon.com]. It's Mac & PC compatible, doesn't say anything about linux or price. Then again, I didn't look very hard.

  • Crossband (Score:3)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Wednesday July 21, 1999 @11:18AM (#1791631) Journal
    Actually, widely separating the frequencies is good. It simplifies the filtering necessary to do full-duplex.

    Approximately three-to-one frequency split lets you use the same antenna, too. A quarter-wave for the lower frequency is about three-quarters for the higher, and will load up reasonably well - especially with a the odd loading coil or capacitor here and there - which just might fall out as a side-effect of the band splitter.

    You want the talk channel to be better than the listen channel, so you don't keep yattering away at somebody that YOU can hear just fine but who can't hear you.
  • someone might have mentioned it, but last time i bought cable, my 10baseT was RJ-45 and my phone cord was RJ-11, not the other way around.... so what's up with the ethernet port and modem port on the diagram? (or did they fix the picture yet?)
  • Since in Italy (and in more than half European Countries) we still have state-monopoly-controlled telecoms that charges you OUTRAGEOUS fares to connect a building to the one across the street, they are quite popular here.
    I'm looking to use 2 Lucent units (that comes as PCMCIA cards only) to connect our HQ to a satellite building nearby.
    Max range is about 5Km (2.5 miles, I think :), frequency is 2.4x GHz. Power is around 10 mW at 1 meter from antenna (or less, otherwise they won't be allowed here).
    The modulation should be a slight variaton of Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum, that is very well known by your 'friend' at the Pentagon, since it's very hard to intercept (on a single frequency the signal level is only a few mW above noise level) and works well even with a lot of unit in the same area.

    And yes, if you buy the 'concentrator' unit, you could simply plug it into your ethernet network and have it working as a bridge.

    Ciao,
    Rob!
  • Linux Drivers are available for Lucent Wavelan!

    Take a look at:
    http://www.fasta.fh-dortmund.de/users/andy/wvlan
    (complete source)
    ftp://ftp.wavelan.com/pub/SOFTWARE/IEEE/PC_CARD/ LINUX/
    (mostly source, but contains binary-only library)

  • Actually, using a yagi instead of an omni to increase directional gain does *not* violate ISM band rules (2.4Ghz). Regulation on power output are based on an omnidirectional source. If the beam is 'focused', higher gain is very much permitted.

    Example.
    a 2.4Ghz ISM band wireless router that I have.
    It operates up to about 150 feet with an small omni.
    With a pair of yagi antennae, we can use them to create a link over 5km long. And this is still within regulations.




  • I went and checked out the WaveLAN pages, and it looks to me like the fastest one they offer is the WaveLAN IEEE Turbo PC Card [wavelan.com]. The description for this product claims:

    The High Speed Option gives
    3 times more effective throughput as the Standard Speed option. Standard Speed and Standard Low Speed are the equivalent to the throughput offered by the WaveLAN IEEE radio.


    Standard Speed being equivalent to 2Mbps, this indicates to me that this Turbo card maxes out at 6Mbps. This falls short of the 11Mbps promised from the AirPort product.

    So I wonder if they are really the same product after all. I'd love it if they were; I'd buy 3 in a heartbeat at $99 a pop. But the lack of any 11 Mbps option on the WaveLAN page makes me wonder.
  • The ISA card is only a simple one-slot PCMCIA-controller for a desktop pc, controllable with the standard linux pcmcia-tools.

    The cards for the desktop-version are the same pcmcia-cards as for laptops, and for them exists even two differnent drivers:

    one from lucent direct, but it's not full source (contains a binary-only library):
    ftp://hyper.stanford.edu/pub/pcmcia/contrib/wave lan2_cs-3.10.tar.gz
    (neuer version is available somewhere on ftp.wavelan.com, but I don't want to search now)

    and a second-one (full source) from some third-party-programmers (based on an alpha-version from lucent and extended):
    http://www.fasta.fh-dortmund.de/users/andy/wvlan /

    The cards even work with linux in peer-to-peer mode, so that you don't need an access-point to connect 2-3 machines.

    c'ya
    sven
  • Hey, all. Check this out-

    A company called Aironet, which FYI is going public this week (!), has had an 11 Mbps system out for the past few months! According to their website (http://www.aironet.com), their stuff runs under DOS, Windows 95/98/NT, Macintosh, Windows CE (lots of handhelds have the Aironet drivers built in), and [drumroll please] Linux!

    I've actually seen Aironet transmitters and receivers, and they're pretty neat. They make 'em for laptops, desktops, network adapters (so you can have wireless access to an existing Ethernet network, for example), etc. The laptop card (PCMCIA) has an algorithm whereby the card goes into sleep mode when the laptop does, so it's only drawing 5mA of power from your laptop battery- the best out of any of the wireless systems I've looked into.

    Also, Aironet makes stuff for *both* FH (frequency hopping) and DS (direct sequence) spread-spectrum systems, and their 11 Mbps system uses DS- just like Apple's new AirPort system. And since both Aironet's and AirPort's systems are IEEE 802.11-compliant, they'll be able to work together.

    Contrast that to companies like Proxim, which is FH-only (and very gung-ho about it, too- check out their website for their "why we hate DS" rants, most of which have little basis in reality), only has 1 and 2 Mbps systems available (and a 5 Mbps system that's not shipping until 2000, and no announced plans for an 11 Mbps system at all). Not only does Proxim solely use FH, but it uses its own proprietary system and usually is *NOT* compatible with IEEE 802.11 systems like AirPort and Aironet- and wouldn't be compatible with AirPort anyway, because AirPort is solely DS, not FH.

    Some more spec's from Aironet's website... At 1 Mbps, one Aironet AP4800 cell covers 260,000 sq. ft. (!), and at its maximum of 11 Mbps it covers 60,000 sq. ft. So, if you're only sharing a 56.6 K modem or something, and you don't need the full data rate, you can crank up the coverage to a really large area and wire your whole neighborhood! (FYI, data rates can be set to 1, 2, 5.5 and/or 11 Mbps per channel, and you can run up to three different channels simultaneously over the same system- meaning, you and your sister can share an Internet connection over one channel, and your brother and your neighbor can play Quake over another one without screwing each other's connections up. Aironet, and other DS systems, can technically run five channels at a time, but the FCC limits it to three. I'm sure some enterprising Slashdot folks out there could figure out hot-wire an Aironet system to run five channels, but you didn't here it from me.)

    In short, Aironet's system is really nice, not too pricey, the fastest available, has a very large range, and will hook up any just about any system you've got, including Linux. Verrrrrrry nice!

    Now if only this summer job paid more, I'd get one myself... :-)
  • 2.4Ghz receive and 900Mhz send? That wouldn't make a lot of sense.. you would need two different antennae, and two different radios.
    And the two different bands have wildly different radio properties.
    2.4Ghz does not penetrate anywhere near as well as 900Mhz does.

    Also, most 2.4Ghz stuff is ISM band, and uses spread spectrum techniques.


  • All tech companies are guilty of hype. I think you would be very hard pressed to demonstrate that Apple's hype is worse than anybody else's, or that Apple is less truthful. Please, do enlighten us. How has Apple lied?

    As far as Bytemarks are concerned, why don't you just bite the bullet and admit that the Pentium is not the best at everything? Given that the PPC does have some multi-operation instructions (eg, MAC) that the Pentium lacks, it is entirely credible that a benchmark that uses this sort of math runs twice as fast on the PPC. And it's not just benchmarks either, you know. It's real-world (albeit niche use) calculations like Photoshop filters. IIRC, some of those go 10x as fast.

    Your snide implication that PPC compilers are either better at optimizing or more benchmark aware is pretty laughable too, given the relative amounts of money thrown at Pentium and PPC compilers. I would assume x86 compilers are the most heavily optimized that you will find anywhere.
  • DSSS refers to Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum.
  • Folks, this is simply Lucent's WaveLAN product, which has been working with Linux for quite a while. I've been using it at home for 3 years. (Used to work at ATT... Old demo equipment headed for the scrap heap... No way would I have picked it up at List Price.) As for getting the ISA card to work, if you look at the WaveLAN [wavelan.com] pages, you'll notice that they have gone to a PCMCIA ISA card, with a PCMCIA WaveLAN adapter plugged into it. Card Services should handle this like any other PCMCIA device. To be certain, just add a genuine PC Card controller to your PC, and just buy the PC Card version of the product.
  • See also Aironet for these as well (PC Cards,
    PCI/ISA cards and Access Points). Note that
    the 802.11 standard only defines 1 and 2 Mbit/sec
    at this time. The 11 Mbit standard is still
    in draft form as far as I know.

    Also, Aironet has Linux drivers for these.
  • SO has anyone seen one close enough to see if there is a way to hack an external antenna on to it? (email me if you have!)
  • I seem to remember that ethernet NICs listens on the line and sends packages when its not busy, hence sometimes two or more NICs decides to send at the same time, thats when the collision led lights up.

    Token Ring on the other hand passes a token around and a NIC can send only when they have it.

    Just my understanging of it though =)
    Im sure there are lots of people here who can tell me if Im to far of base.

  • From the faq on the Apple site,

    Q. Can I use a PC notebook in an AirPort network?
    A. Yes. Because AirPort is based on the IEEE 802.11 DSSS standard, there are a number of companies with products that allow a PC to be used in an AirPort network.

    SteveM
  • A lot of those power-plug or telephone-line based home networking things top out at 1 Mbps.
  • err... You're saying 28.8K and 56K modems are not in common use? Get real. The overwhelming majority uses them. So a 11Mb/s connection would kick (although they would have to upgrade to someting like a DSL or cable to get that kind of speed). Point is, if you buy a few ibooks, and happen to have DSL, you can have a wireless network, running at ethernet speeds. No way that is commonplace.

    Cheers,
    Geon
  • I wonder what kind of distance this thing has? It never mentions what level of frequency or intensity it uses, just that it uses radio waves. If I could use this to set up a network in the apartment complex I live in... ahhh!

  • Re:10 times faster than most home networking? (Score:3)

    by Paul Carver ( 4555 ) on Wednesday July 21, 1999 @07:33AM (#1791667)
    I believe there are a number of 1Mbps (yes, one) products currently being marketed for home use. These have been announced within the past year. The reason why anyone would use them when 10BaseT is so cheap is because they run over the existing phone lines in the house without interupting phone service (presumably they do all their signalling above 3kHz). This is very attractive to the non-techie who doesn't want to run Cat 5 around the house.

    So yes, Apple can make a plausible claim that 11Mbps is 10 times faster than the networking that a casual home network user might have.

  • Wireless isn't all it's cracked up to be... (Score:5)

    by SKiLLzzz ( 31502 ) on Wednesday July 21, 1999 @07:35AM (#1791668)
    I work at an ISP and have used these wireless 11MB things before. They work generally well once you get them going. They may say 11MB but once you get three or more connected it goes down to about 3-5MB. Not that that is all that bad but it's not 11. It works like ethernet over token ring. The main unit polls each of the clients about 1500 times per second. If they don't have anything to send then it goes to the next client... If you start playing TF on these radios they go to shit. The UDP packets go way too fast for the polling system and things get laggy. But if you just want to transfer files it'll do the job. It really shouldn't need any drivers so all you should have to do is plug yer nic into it. Good Luck if you buy one.
  • At around 150 feet transmission radius, you're going to have a hard time going all the way down the street.

    ~GoRK
  • I think they're talking about Appletalk, which is what a lot of Mac people use for home networking. You'd be amazed how many people still have Appletalk networks set up (my old High school computer lab is still 20 or so Mac Pluses hooked to a single Mac II printserver (hooked to 4 Imagewriters!)) with Appletalk over serial cables.

  • I think the missing word is wireless. Most other wireless home network gear is 1 or 2 Mbps, making this thing 5-10 times faster.

  • Ahhh... Thanks. But I still have trouble believing that those things actually dominate "home networking". Everyone I know with a network at home uses ethernet. Of course, my friends do tend toward the geeky end of the bell curve. ;)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I actually hadn't thought of using the serial port (It definitely has one)... In my house only 2 wires are hooked up to each jack, but we have 3 phone wire pairs and are only using 2 (for our two lines). I would really like some more info on this if you have some... Right now I have a Performa 631CD (w/ 2 serial, 2 adb, scsi, etc.) with a 10-base-T LCcom NIC that I want to (ideally) connect to a 10-base-T hub, but could connect directly to my Linux server ('486 DX 40MHZ, which currently has no free slots, but some cards can be done away with [8-bit sound card comes to mind]) on it's own subnet... I would REALLY appreciate any suggestions you could give me.

    Thanks,

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Interesting that you can buy a whole Apple base station for the price of a PC plug-in card, and an apple plug-in card for a third of that.

    I suspect this will put some price pressure on PC cards. Expect a price drop shortly.
  • In the general case, yes, but I have a situation that makes this a bit trickey. On either end of this wireless network I have:
    • A Mac Performa 631CD (w/ 10-base-T LC-com NIC)... which is all but impossible to get cards for and
    • a small LAN centered around a small Linux Server ('486 40MHZ) that currently has no free slots connected via an 8-port hub (w/ many ports unused)
    If I could just stick a card in either end, that would be great, but I'm close to positive that I won't be able to find a LC-com 802.11 NIC for the Mac, and I don't have a slot necessarily availible on the server, so Ideally I would like to just plug in RJ-45 at either end and be done with it. I am open to other possibilities, but the above would be the ideal case.

    Given that, the only products listed that claim 10-base-T connections, are the base units (at $300 a pop) which I would want at either end of this point-to-point connection.

  • Well I don't think you have to worry *too* much about encryption for these puppies.
    I beg to differ. I don't think you've spent much time thinking about threat scenarios.
    any units not listening *specifically* for a message encrypted with that code will simply not "hear" it...
    That may be enough to prevent someone from listening to an active TCP connection (assuming they can't hack a receiver), but there are definitely other threats. Two that come to mind:
    • I have a firewall between my ADSL and my home network. But with AirPort, there's only 40-bit encryption (weak) preventing an attacker from becoming part of my network. With my current wired Ethernet, the attacker would have to either physically break into my home, or subvert my firewall. It's always possible that the firewall has weaknesses that I'm unaware of, but unless the attacker knows or finds those weaknesses, he has to break a 168-bit triple DES key to attack it.

    • Even if an attacker doesn't want to break into my personal network, he can get free access to my ADSL internet connection. Again, assuming only that he breaks a 40-bit key.
    I'm not saying that AirPort is a bad product. I'm only pointing out that you do have to worry about the encryption, and that 40 bits is pathetic. Obviously they wanted to avoid the stupid US crypto export regs. I'd be much more inclined to buy a unit with strong crypto, if some company starts selling them.

    Not because I really think random people are trying to attack my network (although my firewall logs do show some script-kiddie attacks), but more as a matter of principle.

  • I also have seen RJ-11 used for ethernet. Believe it or not, this setup was at the same university that hosts the National Center for Supercomputing Applications!
  • Sorry, but just because it is 802.11 DSSS standard
    DOES NOT mean it can talk to another 802.11 device. Maybe next year...
  • Right... "Token Ring on the other hand passes a token around and a NIC can send only when they have it."



    That's just about the same way this works. The server "box" polls the clients. If your client isn't getting polled when you want to send, you wait. Therefore you lose throughput. And you don't just lose the top 30-40% like wired ethernet you lose about 70% once you get 3 or 4 clients. This equipment works great for linking two wired lans, in ,say, two seperate buildings. It just isn't designed to link 50 clients together. If you want to see it, go down to your nearest CarMax(tm). At my nearest location (Sterling, VA) they have a showroom with terminals hooked together by wlan technology.



    You can hook an antenna up to it to make it go further but that gets complex because you have to point each antenna at the base station. If you have ever hooked up a DSS dish, you know it's not the easiest thing in the world.
  • stealing a few mb's per second from the neighbors...i can just see it now.
  • Can i connect 2 LANS with the base units by connecting a base unit to each hub?
    That would really save my butt :)
  • I believe they are comparing it to other wireless LANs and LANs that use existing house wiring(phone/Cable/AC). I don't know about other wireless LANs, but the only phone-wiring based LAN I know of runs at 1 MB/s, and cable modem runs at under 2 MB/s... The only "LAN" I can think of that runs over AC is X-10.

    While I am not adverse to the idea of stinging up CAT5 all over the house, most non-geeks are (my mom comes to mind).

    Regards,

  • No, but they are alluding to "home networking" at approximately 1 Mbps, so 28.8K and 56K modems don't appear to be what they mean.
  • Not that i really have a clue of what i'm talking about, but, I don't suppose these base stations could talk to each other, and just plug a nic into the RJ-45 jack... and then pop off the pretty plasic case and add leads to a television antenna and suddenly have cheap wireless with some decent range for the neighborhood LAN? You buy a T1 and have all of the neighbors help pay? I like that..... Just speculation.... It probably wouldn't be too hard for those Lucent engineers to get something like that working....

    Just a Thought.....

    Who needs the FCC anyway?? ;)


  • So true, so true... Hmmmmmm... Apple Graphic Artists do not use computers too often...
  • 150 feet is all I need. Set up repeater stations if necessary.

  • PC compatibility (Score:3)

    by samsonone ( 33070 ) on Wednesday July 21, 1999 @07:43AM (#1791699)
    If you go to the Airport faq [apple.com] it says specifically that this will be compatible with both PCs and existing IEEE 802.11 DSSS devices.

    Also, I dont know anything about that standard, but I found this:

    The 802.11 DSSS standard currently supports a data rate of 2 Mbps with collision avoidance. Future generations of standards-compatible DSSS
    products from Zoom are expected to have data rates up to 11 Mbps with backward compatibility to 2
    Mbps products.

    on the Zoomtel [zoomtel.com] website. I guess that means that were going to see other devices that can perform the same way as Apple's Airport
  • Steve Jobs was on MSNBC within the last couple hours, talking about this very thing. After praising it's 'innovative nature', he basically spent the last four or five minutes of the interview repeating the Apple-Mantra of "We only want to make the best computers in the world and the best software for our customers. We don't think about the money".
    ---
    seumas.com

  • AirPort Tech info (Score:3)

    by First Person ( 51018 ) on Wednesday July 21, 1999 @07:47AM (#1791701)

    The FAQ [apple.com] makes several interesting points:

    * The signal uses radio frequencies instead of IR. It will therefore pass through walls and other obstacles.

    * No encryption scheme is mentioned. If multiple base stations are in close proximity - say in apartments, dorms, etc. - I wonder how performance will be affected and who might decide to listen in.

    * Two iBooks with AirPort cards can communicate without any base station. Imagine playing Quake during lectures? I also wonder about the broadcast capabilities. Sending lecture notes, applets, and homeworks assignments to the audience could be quite convenient in academic settings.

    In conclusion, this makes the IR on the Palm V look quite primitive.

  • There have been a slew of recent announcements
    from Telxon, Symbol, et al. concerning
    10+Mb 802.11 compiliant devices - including
    VoIP phones and the like.
    While these are geared more for the business market than the home market currently, you *know* they have to be eyeing that playground as well.
    And they have nifty-neato bridges, for instances,
    to hook their access points to analog phone bridges. VoIP to POTS! POTS to VoIP! Dogs and cats living together....

  • Something Apple didn't hype yet but is buried deep in the FAQ is that you don't need the hub to communicate between Airport hosts:



    What is the AirPort Software Access Point?

    This special software allows you to use a second iBook computer as a wireless base station to connect to the Internet instead of using an AirPort Base Station. The software works similarly to the hardware access point, except that it uses the modem of the iBook as its Internet connection.
  • what about for two separate EXISTING wired LANs?
  • The website for this stuff says that you can
    connect several (10) iBooks in the same house to
    the same ISP through the same bridge. Does that
    mean that this "hub" also does IP Masquerading
    (aka Network Address Translation) in hardware?

    Can you disable that if you want to give the
    iBooks real IPs, or what?

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