Atheros or Prism?

I am going to buy some PCI WiFi (11g) cards. But I have two options:

- NETGEAR WG311: Atheros chip (http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi).
- 3COM OfficeConnect Wireless 11g PC Card [3CRWE154G72]: Prism chip
(http://www.prism54.org) -> 25 €(euros) more expensive than the NetGear.

Which chip is better? Which linux driver is better? Which driver is
easier to install? Is it worth to buy the 3COM one?

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.


PS: The access point I am going to use with them is 3COM. Is advisable
to buy 3COM cards then?

I wrote:
> I am going to buy some PCI WiFi (11g) cards. But I have two options:
>
> - NETGEAR WG311: Atheros chip (http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi).
> - 3COM OfficeConnect Wireless 11g PC Card [3CRWE154G72]: Prism chip
> (http://www.prism54.org) -> 25 €(euros) more expensive than the NetGear.
>
> Which chip is better? Which linux driver is better? Which driver is
> easier to install? Is it worth to buy the 3COM one?
>
> Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
>
>
> PS: The access point I am going to use with them is 3COM. Is advisable
> to buy 3COM cards then?

I made a mistake. The 3COM card I have written is PCMCIA. I wanted to
write down this one, which is PCI: 3Com 11a/b/g Wireless PCI Adapter
[3CRDAG675], which I suppose it uses the same chip as the PCMCIA.

Regards.

knocte <knocte@no-spam-please-hotmail.com> wrote:
> I am going to buy some PCI WiFi (11g) cards. But I have two options:
>
> - NETGEAR WG311: Atheros chip (http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi).
> - 3COM OfficeConnect Wireless 11g PC Card [3CRWE154G72]: Prism chip
> (http://www.prism54.org) -> 25 ?(euros) more expensive than the NetGear.

I can say that the Atheros chipset (with CVS drivers) work ok for me.
The driver is still beta, but its actively being worked on, and I can
say I have had no major issues, except that wvwave doesn't show the
link strength very well, and wavemon doesn't work with it, but that's
to be expected with wavemon.

> PS: The access point I am going to use with them is 3COM. Is advisable
> to buy 3COM cards then?

Doesn't hurt, but it should still work either way. I have an Apple
Airport Extreme (in need of upgrading so I can use by 11b card), and a
D-Link 11g PCMCIA card. Works ok, but the indicator lights are too
bright and they flash, which is annoying at night.

--
Cameron Kerr
cameron.kerr@paradise.net.nz : http://nzgeeks.org/cameron/
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