Kevin Brosius on Mon, 17 Sep 2001 16:30:47 +0200


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: [PLUG] 802.11 Questions


ian reinhart geiser wrote:
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Monday 17 September 2001 09:42 am, you wrote:
> > You could grab a couple used ricochet modems off of Ebay and set them up
> > in point-to-point mode.  However, I'm not convinced the present driver
> > gets 128K throughput.  I've been experimenting with them a little and it
> > does work, but I wouldn't promise you 128K.  If you go looking, I'd
> > recommend the GS model over the newer GT.  I managed to grab a pair of
> > the GT's for $30/ea on Ebay a while back.
> 
> i thought ricochet went out of business?
> are these internal PCI cards or what are they?
> 

Yes, ricochet is still in the Chapter 11 proceedings with no end in
sight yet.

The GS & GT are external modems with serial/USB interfaces.  USB is
supposed to give higher throughput because of limits near 128K on a
serial line.  There are a couple PCMCIA cards available, but I don't
have experience with them (but if you can find one for ~$30-50 it might
be worth playing with.  Ebay had some for around $100.  I couldn't
justify that price.)

The modems support a modem to modem mode called starmode which works
without the Ricochet network as long as they are in radio range.  The
claim is that you can do about a mile over open ground.  (So your
tradeoffs are, cheaper/slower, but much longer range than 802.11b.)

-- 
Kevin Brosius


______________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group       -      http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  -  http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug