From: hutch_at_psfc.mit.edu
Date: 2002-07-03 12:59:09 UTC
The D-Link 650 and 500 work with the hostap driver. However, not
perfectly. They also work with the orinoco driver, again not perfectly.
The orinoco driver, which uses the modules orinoco_cs, orinoco, and hermes, and which is activated by making hermes.conf the configuration file found in /etc/pcmcia is part of the latest kernels. When used with the D-Link 650, it gives fairly reliable connection but only transfers at a painfully slow rate, 10kB/s download and 100kB/s upload (or is it the other way round, I forget, anyway real slow). It has trouble resetting the card, and often you have to wait long enough with the card out of the socket for it to discharge itself so as to get a clean reset.
The hostap driver works well with the D-Link 500 (PCI) on a desktop linux box. It is a pcmcia adapter with a card installed in it, so you need pcmcia support running. You must make hostap.conf the only .conf file in /etc/pcmcia and then /etc/init.d/pcmcia restart. (Also there are troubles concerning the incompatibility of the Red Hat hotplug system and the pcmcia network scripts but I don't know the best solution to that.) This driver is evolving fast. I have been using the 19 May 2002 version.
Connecting to it (or to other APs) with the 650 (PCMCIA) using the hostap driver in a Thinkpad T20 in managed mode works and is fast: 500kB/s as you'd expect. However, it has a reproducible behaviour of crashing the connection on upload of a file larger that roughly 0.5MB. The link eventually recovers itself after perhaps 10 seconds or more, but will crash again after another few 100 kB. (This is using 64bit WEP). I have figured out the /etc/pcmcia/network script problem enough that I can put the WEP key in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts and it is applied correctly.
By the way, I have done some experimentation with the wlan-ng driver. It also works, but also does the periodic crashing thing (although I can't testify that it does it identically). It doesn't recover as well as the others.
In short, D-Link sort of works, but the present support is very flakey, at least in my present setup. I'd be delighted if someone has better experience to explain to us.
--
Ian Hutchinson, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, MIT.
http://www.psfc.mit.edu/people/hutch/index.html
On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, Carles Xavier Munyoz Baldó wrote:
> I'm looking at the D-Link wireless solutions, but they say that they are only
> supported in Windows.
> May I use this cards in Linux ? (not only for the Access Point Linux box)
> I would like to use it in the managed Linux PC clients too. Is it possible ?
>
> If the answer is yes, which is the driver I should use ?
> I have seen the "Hermes chipset 802.11b support (Orinoco/Prims2/Symbol)" and
> "Hermes PCMCIA card support" in the menu config for the kernel compilation.
> Must I use this drivers for the D-Link wireless PCI and PCMCIA cards ?