In what sense do you find a real base station more convienent? Do you take it with you between the office and home? The thought of tucking my i386 box under the arm vs a base station kinda makes me agree with you there :)

Or does the base station manage connect and roaming better than a BSD box acting as an access point?

--et

On Wed, 19 Jun 2002 07:46:17 -0400
"Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@research.att.com> wrote:

> In message <20020619212458.1557c26f.et@houseofet.com>, Ernst du Toit writes:
> >Hi All
> >
> >Please excuse some stupid questions, but this is completely new for me :)
> >
> >I'm in the process of getting an Apple with an Airport card and I would like t
> >o get a wireless card for my i386 box to make it act as an access point for DS
> >L etc. instead of looking at the Airport Base Station. I assume the Apple Airp
> >ort card has no Apple magic, apart from being amputated to fit into the Apple 
> >formfactor, so any IEEE 802.11b device can talk to it.
> >
> >Which wireless cards work well with NetBSD and to make things more interesting
> >, can take an external antenna? I'd prefer PCI, but if there are any USB devic
> >es that work I'll look at them too.
> >
> >On the otherhand if someone has a good argument why the Airport Base Station i
> >s better than having a wireless card in my existing i386, I'd love to hear it!
> 
> I use the Orinoco PCMCIA card very regularly; it works just fine.  And 
> yes, it can take an external antenna.  The problem I had was the 
> Orinoco PCI->Cardbus bridge didn't work.  But I should try that again; 
> I upgraded to 1.6beta2 last night.
> 
> That said, I found a real base station more convenient, especially 
> because I use wireless in my office, too.
> 
> 		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
> 		http://www.wilyhacker.com ("Firewalls" book)
> 
>