Wireless gurus

[David A. Bandel]

On Mon, 3 Mar 2003 16:23:49 -0800 
Condon Thomas A KPWA <tcondon at kpt.nuwc.navy.mil> wrote:

> 
> Folks,
> 
> I've got DSL with a modem/firewall/router that has PCMCIA card
> capability(Actiontec), and I'll be receiving soon a laptop (Powerbook)
> with the AirPort card included.
> 
> My question regards base station wireless cards.  Do they require more
> capabilities than the normal laptop card?  Or will any ethernet card
> that meets 802.11b work?  If I'm running three laptops with wireless
> cards at once will I have collision problems if I put a normal card
> into my router? What I don't know about wireless (or most things)
> could fill volumes.  In fact, I think O'Reily already wrote several of
> them.

APs and "base stations" use normal cards, they just have different
circuitry and software in the AP itself.  The AP providers don't want
you to know how to turn on those features in the card or they couldn't
sell you an expensive AP.

You have, however, two ways to go:
Managed:  this is where an AP or other "base station" by whatever name,
handles all the traffic (the dictator that runs the net).
Ad-hoc (peer-to-peer): this is where cards talk amongst each other, no
one is the leader (actually, one is elected leader, but that's all
transparent to you).

You'll have no more collision problems than you have on a 10Mb network. 
Within your house, you should have few "hidden nodes".  If you network
to systems separated by miles, you may encounter this, but it's
manageable for the most part (not by you, by the systems).

Ciao,

David A. Bandel
-- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
		Nemesis Racing Team motto
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