> I've been looking at adding wireless ethernet to my home as well, and from
> what research I've done, I think I'm going with the Orinoco RG-1000. But I do
> have a couple questions about this that maybe someone can help me with.
>
> First, what kind of drivers are there for linux?? Are they opensource
> drivers??
There are Lucent card drivers for Linux out there in the open source community, yes.
> And second, I have a Zyxel Prestige 310 hooked up to my cable modem that I use
> for NAT/Firewall/etc. Can I use the RG-1000 with my existing ethernet and
> still have the Zyxel handle all the router stuff?? Basically, I just want to
> add some wireless nodes to my network without changing anything else.
Yeah, just turn NAT off in the RG-1000 and everything will work just fine.
First off, Lucent makes the AirPort for Apple so the RG-1000 and the AirPort are almost exactly the same guts internally. It's not an Aeronet box like "Jay L" said. That being the case, here are some answers to your questions.
1. How does the coverage of the two compare? Are the wireless transmitters essentially the same? (Both seem to use Orinoco Silver cards, though the RG-1000's card isn't removable.)
They're both the same basic board design and use exactly the same WaveLAN Silver card in them. You can remove the card in the RG-1000, it just takes a bit more work. There's a bit of a danger in taking an RG-1000 apart because there's a chance you might break some of the plastic pins that hold the thing together.
2. I've seen the stories about extending coverage by hooking an external antenna to the Apple Airports. Can an external antenna be attached to the RG-1000? If so, with or without hacking?
Neither housing has an antenna extension connector on the outside so you have to do hacking to put a bigger antenna on either one.
3. The Orinoco FAQ says that about 30 clients can be supported by a single RG-1000. Apple's specs suggests 10 clients max. Has anyone used more then 10 clients with an Apple Airport and if so how well did it work?
These are just marketing numbers. I believe that 30 is the absolute max. before you start filling up the airwaves while ten is a good number where you can guarantee a decent connection to all users assuming the all have some rigorous data needs. Lighter use = more concurrent users.
4. Both products can do NAT. Can you configure filters or open up ports with the utilities provided with either?
Neither configurator that comes with either box lets you do cool low level geek-type config of the box, but there are a couple of config packages out there that let you tweak more at the low level. I think the idea was that because it's a consumer product, they try to keep advanced config away from most users.
The bottom line really is that they're both the same board and radio card inside different housings so they're basically the same thing. I think the AirPort 1.2 software load that goes on the box might have some improvements that the current shipping RG-1000 software image doesn't have on them, but I'd keep a look out at the WaveLAN web site to watch for new releases of software for all of Lucent's access point products and cards. Lucent makes some cool stuff and they actually control a lot of the underlying technology so I look for new cool things to be coming from them in the future.
The only downside I see is that Apple seems to be sticking with these goofy IDE cards for their internal card solution where it looks like (from releases by IBM) that the PC manufacturers might be using some sort of smaller mini PCMCIA card.
As far as Jay L's list goes, I disagree with all of it except for the antenna issue. I'd like to see Apple and Lucent put a connector on the outside of their residential boxes so we can easily tack on bigger antennae. I had no problems with Lucent support, guess I called a different number than he did.:-)
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> I've been looking at adding wireless ethernet to my home as well, and from
> what research I've done, I think I'm going with the Orinoco RG-1000. But I do
> have a couple questions about this that maybe someone can help me with.
>
> First, what kind of drivers are there for linux?? Are they opensource
> drivers??
There are Lucent card drivers for Linux out there in the open source community, yes.
> And second, I have a Zyxel Prestige 310 hooked up to my cable modem that I use
> for NAT/Firewall/etc. Can I use the RG-1000 with my existing ethernet and
> still have the Zyxel handle all the router stuff?? Basically, I just want to
> add some wireless nodes to my network without changing anything else.
Yeah, just turn NAT off in the RG-1000 and everything will work just fine.
First off, Lucent makes the AirPort for Apple so the RG-1000 and the AirPort are almost exactly the same guts internally. It's not an Aeronet box like "Jay L" said. That being the case, here are some answers to your questions.
:-)
1. How does the coverage of the two compare? Are the wireless transmitters essentially the same? (Both seem to use Orinoco Silver cards, though the RG-1000's card isn't removable.)
They're both the same basic board design and use exactly the same WaveLAN Silver card in them. You can remove the card in the RG-1000, it just takes a bit more work. There's a bit of a danger in taking an RG-1000 apart because there's a chance you might break some of the plastic pins that hold the thing together.
2. I've seen the stories about extending coverage by hooking an external antenna to the Apple Airports. Can an external antenna be attached to the RG-1000? If so, with or without hacking?
Neither housing has an antenna extension connector on the outside so you have to do hacking to put a bigger antenna on either one.
3. The Orinoco FAQ says that about 30 clients can be supported by a single RG-1000. Apple's specs suggests 10 clients max. Has anyone used more then 10 clients with an Apple Airport and if so how well did it work?
These are just marketing numbers. I believe that 30 is the absolute max. before you start filling up the airwaves while ten is a good number where you can guarantee a decent connection to all users assuming the all have some rigorous data needs. Lighter use = more concurrent users.
4. Both products can do NAT. Can you configure filters or open up ports with the utilities provided with either?
Neither configurator that comes with either box lets you do cool low level geek-type config of the box, but there are a couple of config packages out there that let you tweak more at the low level. I think the idea was that because it's a consumer product, they try to keep advanced config away from most users.
The bottom line really is that they're both the same board and radio card inside different housings so they're basically the same thing. I think the AirPort 1.2 software load that goes on the box might have some improvements that the current shipping RG-1000 software image doesn't have on them, but I'd keep a look out at the WaveLAN web site to watch for new releases of software for all of Lucent's access point products and cards. Lucent makes some cool stuff and they actually control a lot of the underlying technology so I look for new cool things to be coming from them in the future.
The only downside I see is that Apple seems to be sticking with these goofy IDE cards for their internal card solution where it looks like (from releases by IBM) that the PC manufacturers might be using some sort of smaller mini PCMCIA card. As far as Jay L's list goes, I disagree with all of it except for the antenna issue. I'd like to see Apple and Lucent put a connector on the outside of their residential boxes so we can easily tack on bigger antennae. I had no problems with Lucent support, guess I called a different number than he did.