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Unfortunately, getting a wireless card to work with Linux, can be quite tricky. Often, it comes down to searching the Internet, making your best guess from bits of information, and then purchasing a card and trying it. It doesn't help that manufacturers like to change chipsets without changing model numbers.
The following table lists the cards which developers involved with the Network Security Toolkit project have access to and are known to work. Its not a large table, but the good news is that we choose our cards by looking at various compatibility tables on the Internet and we haven't purchased one yet that doesn't work. Paul currently prefers to limit his purchases to cards reported to work with the madwifi drivers.
Table 7.1. Table Of Wireless Cards Known To Work With Network Security Toolkit
| Identifier | Bus | Driver | Monitor | WEP | WPA | Type/Max Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D-Link AG660 | CARDBUS | ath5k | Yes | 128 | Yes | B/11Mbps, G/108Mbps, A/108Mbps |
| Intel 2200BG | MINI-PCI | ipw2200 | Yes | 128 | Yes | B/11Mbps, G/54Mbps |
| LinkSys WPC55AG Rev 1.1 | CARDBUS | ath5k | Yes | 128 | Yes | B/11Mbps, G/54Mbps, A/54Mbps |
| NetGear WG311 | PCI | acx100 | Yes | 128 | No | B/11Mbps, G/54Mbps |
| NetGear WG311T | PCI | ath5k | Yes | 128 | Yes | B/11Mbps, G/108Mbps |
Don't be discouraged if you don't see your wireless card listed in the table above. We don't have an unlimited budget to purchase and try every card. So, there's a good chance your card will work if its known to work with Fedora 8, or any of the cards supported by the ath5k (madwifi), ipw2200, acx100;, or many of the other wireless cards included in a Fedora distribution.
The above table is based upon cards purchased and tested by the NST developers. If you purchase one of the above cards and the it has a different chipset than the one we purchased, it may not work with the NST (the wireless LAN world is a mess).
Drivers supporting the NetGear
WG311 card became available in release
1.4.0 of the NST (they are not available
in version 1.2.3 or earlier). Cards other
than the NetGear WG311 using this chipset
may or may not work (see http://acx100.sourceforge.net/
for details on the driver). If you need a different version of
the firmware, you'll need to copy it to the NST probe once
its booted, and then update the module configuration in
/etc/modprobe.d/acx_wlan.