Hardware notes
You will need:
Agere/Lucent Orinoco (aka WaveLAN) cards are good value for money, as they apparently get better connections that most other cards. They have an external antenna socket (vital), and are supported by most free Unicies.
There are 2 versions (Gold & Silver) - Gold offers higher encryption level (128-bit), silver has weaker encryption (64-bit, which is actually only 40-bit).
Since the WEP encryption algorithm was broken, there should no longer be any reason to buy the Gold card.
Prices were around £60 to £80 at March 2002.
The card is PCMCIA, so you may need to buy a PCI or ISA converter (£50) if the card is for use with a regular PC (ISA ones work best with Linux rather than the PCI ones, apparently).
You will probably be able to find cheap deals on Ebay.
For the Orinoco and WaveLAN cards, you will also need a 'pigtail', which is a short lead that connects the proprietary antenna socket
on the back of the card to a standard N-type connector which is used for most antenna and cables.
* Here is a page showing pictures of the Orinoco, and its external antenna socket.
How to set up a consume win2k node
Short ZDNet Review
Linux driver info
Lucent WaveLAN approximate ranges (though don't get too excited yet, see this page too..)
O'Reilly: guide and install procedures for Orinoco card
O'Reilly: long-range experiments with Orinoco card
The Agere/Lucent Orinoco/WaveLAN card official site, also (2)
External Antenna
You can either build one yourself, or purchase an antenna from one of the commercial sources listed above.
If you have enough time to build your own, you can save £100-200, so it's well worth considering.
Antenna quality/power is rated in decibels (dB) - 15dB is a powerful antenna suitable for maybe 4 miles range or more, 6dB is more
suitable for only a local area. Beware that there is a legal maximum antenna power in most countries (including the UK) of something
like 30dB, but unless you are using some kind of amplifier it's going to be pretty hard to break that limit.
You might want to read this excellent introduction to radio antennae.
Here are some antenna design links:
| Description | Stock code | Approx. price | Notes |
| N-type male plug | FJ77 | £2.54 | |
| N-type female socket | FJ80 | £1.70 | Square-based with four holes for attachment to a flat surface |
| Low capacitance co-axial cable | XR19 | 50p per metre |
Misc. Antenna Links
Antenna cable
Should be high-quality coaxial cable, as short as possible (just a couple of metres of lower-quality cable can completely absorb your signal), terminating in male standard N-connector plugs. There are different types, according to the quality of the
shielding. If you're trying to get a signal as far as possible, you need really high quality cable.
LMR-400 cable is especially high-quality, and will only lose 4dB of signal over 15 metres, though the wire is well-shielded, so it
will be difficult to bend into a circle of radius greater than 15cm.
Antenna calculations
How to calculate the wavelength
Misc. Hardware Links
Useful links - (including antenna): http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/WirelessLinks
