1. Introduction, Features and Internals

There are a lot of Broadcom-based 802.11g cards on the market, many from better known names such as Linksys and Belkin. So why would you want to buy ASUS' WL-100g 802.11g CardBus adapter?

Figure 1: The board
(click on the images for full-sized views)

First, there's the antenna. Figure 1 shows the swing up antenna, which is part of the dual diversity antenna system. I was pleased to see that the antenna is actually attached via a miniature connector (I think it's SMB), which is not only robust, but leaves the door open for attaching higher gain antennas - with a little hacking.

Then, there's the suite of client applications included with the card. Most other cards - with the exception of NETGEAR's WAG511[reviewed here] - come with client applications that do little more than duplicate the functions included in WinXP's Wireless Zero Configuration. And even then, some fall short by not allowing access to all the card properties that you may need to tweak.

ASUS' WLAN Control Center is a whole different animal, and probably the best set of wireless client configuration applications that I've seen to date.

Figure 2: IP configuration
(click on the image for a full-sized view)

The Wireless Settings application replaces all the functions provided by WinXP's Wireless Zero Configuration utility and adds many functions of its own, a few of which are shown in Figures 2 and 3.

Sadly, the only thing it doesn't have is a built-in WPA supplicant - even though the 100g's driver supports WPA. So you'll have to switch back over to ZeroConfig or use a third-party supplicant if you want WPA's improved security.

Figure 3: Site Survey
(click on the image for a full-sized view)