[lug] Linux and wireless

[Nate Duehr]

Michael Belanger wrote:

> I took the easy way out and purchased a D-Link DGL-3420 Wireless Gaming 
> adapter (overpaid due to impatience) at CompUSA. $103 (w/tax).  

I also have one of those for one of the TiVo's, and I was impressed when 
I hooked the laptop to it for initial setup and testing at the very low 
latencies it exhibited.

I also noticed that if you have D-Link's 802.11 a/b/g router (I don't), 
it will do some kind of bonding between a/g that allows some spiffy high 
data rates, judging by the settings available for that in the web interface.

No clue how it would handle being positioned somewhere in the house 
where say the g portion of things was noisy but a made it to the 
bridge... probably badly.

> it is about 100% more expensive than a wireless card, but I think I will save 
> that in grief and pain -- to which I have experienced too much of in the last 
> 2 weeks (with wireless networking in general).  

Mine really seems to work well.  Well enough that I'm going to drop 
using the 802.11b (last b device in the house...) USB on the other TiVo 
and get a wired USB adapter that works (getting hard to find) and 
another D-Link bridge.

Various forum postings indicate that TiVo data rates to native 
USB/802.11b devices are much worse than to USB/wired devices, so 
tricking the wired device into thinking it's on a wired network is 
useful in my setup.

Why TiVo hasn't just put a wired Ethernet connection directly in the box 
by now... using someone's chipset they can get Linux support for, I'll 
never know.  They've probably easily spent whatever money they were 
trying to save by not doing that on support personnel's time with 
confused purchasers of newer (non-compatible with Linux) USB adapters, 
by now.

Nate