Best Wireless 802.11b

Neither... right now... I really like the new US Robotics 22mbit. Of course Orinoco is always good as well.

I currently have a D-Link 22Mbit Wireless AP and PCMCIA card (the AirLink Plus series).

Together, they seem to work ok. However, I've noticed 4 things so far:

1. The AP seems to sometimes have problems with non-D-Link wireless cards. My brother tried his Orinoco and also a no-name USB wireless, and the signal would oscillate back and forth between strong and very weak. Not sure if it was truly a connection problem or merely a problem tracking the signal strength. Anyway, we changed the motherboard and then the USB one was fine on my wireless D-Link LAN, although on the old motherboard it connected fine to my brother's wireless LAN. It just looks like D-Link is a bit fussy with non-D-Link equipment.

2. Even though it is advertised as 22Mbit, of course it never gets that high. Unfortunately, it always seems to drop down to the equivalent speed of what my brother's 11 Mbit wireless LAN gets in the same house. Maybe there are more things I need to change in the config of the AP (lots of stuff in there I'm not sure of what it does, so left at default), but so far it has had no additional performance benefit over the 11 Mbit wireless LANs.

3. The setup was very easy. In fact, it's a little bit TOO aggressive in seeking out other D-Link cards. My brother borrowed my D-Link PCMCIA to try with his own wireless network, and it kept detecting the D-Link AP even though it wasn't set up to even try to find that AP! A great convenience when making an Ad-Hoc network I suppose, but possibly a security risk since the network is screaming out "Here I am!" to any other D-Link users.

4. The connection strength on my wireless LAN seems to be consistently lower than my brother's in the same house and in the same rooms. It could be just the software utilities being different (his sometimes reads "150% signal strength", whatever THAT is supposed to mean). My AP is in the basement, and on the 2nd floor of my house I usually get 95-100% signal quality but only 45-60% signal strength. My brother's usually reads in the 90's for both.

For 802.11b client devices, Cisco's 350 series by a wide margin. Proxim makes good gear, and for the price conscious is probably a better choice. If money is no object Cisco 802.11b equipment has no real competition.

CCNA, MCSE, A+, Cisco Certified Wireless Field Engineer