What 802.11A cards to purchase.

[David L. Vrablic]

I am building some stand alone boxes to replace some of the old XI-1500 PXP boxes that I have been using for backhaul links.
I want to use 5.x for this.

The DLINK DWL-A520 appears to be a neat solution as it has the adapter, the engine, and a RSMA connector right on the card edge.
Cost is under $100.00 each.

Are the new drivers being written to support this card?

Anyone have a better option.?

[lonnie]

I hate to say this but to buy ANY cards before we have them supported and expect us to add support is a big mistake. Until we release a driver you never know what is going to be supported. We might find the whole works is not usable and we might turn away, so please sit tight and don't have any false starts. A false start requires you to do it over, and that gets expensive in real life hardware.

[lonnie]

To be specific on your card question, the A520 is based on the Atheros chips and we are not big enough for them to consider us. Also any Dlink that adds + to the number is TI based and TI does not "have enough bandwidth" in their SALES channel to help us. As if their SALES DROIDS could help us. I guess I have a different idea of what a sales guy is supposed to do. I shouldn't rant, but

Some of you guys have put in good words with Senao and we are making real good progress with them.

Intersil is still the best as far as providing information, and Proxim/Agere has been awesome. It is no wonder we have very good support for their cards.

Atmel is also looking very promising. They have some questions that need to be answered but they like what we are doing. They seem to have some pretty good stuff.

[David L. Vrablic]

That is just the information I was looking for.
I am going to go ahead and build the boxes and populate them with Lucent for now. They have extra slots that I can put the new card in when supported. Then with everything in place it will be a simple swap of ip's.
At least I get the needed work done and gain management of my links while I am waiting.
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If there is anyone we can write to "to help grease the skids" let us know.

Thanks again,
Dave

[bobbyc]

I bought a few of the dlink A520 cards, in the hope to use them as backhaul... but turns out they aren't fcc certified so I ebayed them. For a few days I had a 10 mile link to my buddies house, the ack timeout was for real. The cards have mmcx connectors (the cisco style) under the metal cover if you take it off, so we just had to attatch a pigtail.
Bob C

[David L. Vrablic]

Great info Bob, these are cards that I don't think we will be using then.
The pictures I got showed the antenna screwed right to the slot plate.
It was a little hard to see how they attached. The PDF I got said RSMA.
They must have been wrong.
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Just a TAD bit OT:
By the by do you know where I can get a chart of the 5.x freqs and how they are used. I am a little "drain bammaged" and I learn better from visuals. :)

I haven't read anywhere how the freq assignments shook out.
Last I heard they were still fighting over some assignmentsand power levels.
I really want to replace a couple of backhauls.
I have a couple of full boat sites with a backhaul and a farpoint link.that are getting busy and I don't relish the idea of "wizzin in my drinking water" If you know what I mean.

Can anyone shed some light.

[bobbyc]

The dlink a520 is 5.15-5.35ghz... 8 channels altogether. The lower 4 channels (5.15-5.25) are supposed to be indoor only. The upper 4 channels (5.25-5.35) are supposed to be able to go outdoor, but are limited to 30dB or something like that.
The new atheros 802.11a chipsets (are they out yet) are supposed to include the upper 5.8ghz channels.
The cards that mikrotik sells are dlink a520 cards. Problem is that they aren't fcc certified and the 30dB max power limit only gives you the option to go 1-2 miles.
Sorry I don't have a chart handy with the channel breakdown.
Lonnie I would keep on lobbying atheros... but i'm sure you have plenty other stuff to do.
Bob C