Linksys wireless Smoothwall?

[FeuerFrei]

Hi everyone

A friend of mine is starting a small office and he want me to put his network together. He needs both wired and wireless network.

So I bought him a linksys wmp54g. The problem is that I cant get the card to work under smoothwall. It recognises both wired cards without problem, but it cant see the wireless.

Here are the specs:

Pentium 1 non-MMX 150@166
64mb EDO ram
Maxtor 4GB drive
D-link DFE-530TXS
D-link DFE-538TX
Linksys WMP54G
ATI MACH64 display adapter
Shuttle board

[Benvanz]

Smoothwall doesn't detect all wireless cards, try a diffrent wireless card to make sure its not just a compatability.

[SavageBasher]

just buy a cheap router and use it as an AP, much simpler.

[klingens]

Before buying WiFi cards make sure the chip on the card is supported by Linux is some way (_not_ smoothwall, but linux). If it is, in one way or other, only then go ahead. If you need special stuff like NDISWrapper or similar, install it. Could be harder with smoothwall then of course than a normal distro.

[ErikD]

Linux + Wireless = Headaches. You can get it to work with the right combination of card chipset, drivers, distro, and maybe even ndiswrapper. Not something I would want going on in my Smoothwall box. Just connect a wireless AP to your switch and you are ready to go with no problems. Plus you can enable all of the wireless security features like WPA and MAC filtering that just connecting to a Smoothwall wouldn't.

[klingens]

Why wouldn't linux be able to do WEP and WPA? Heck some Linux drivers even allow proper AP mode, but this time with the versatility of Linux

[hkgonra]

just buy a cheap router and use it as an AP, much simpler.


I agree, much easier to setup and get working in my experience.

[Xenocide]

since when did smoothwall ever support wireless cards....

use an AP its way more robust..

[ErikD]

Why wouldn't linux be able to do WEP and WPA? Heck some Linux drivers even allow proper AP mode, but this time with the versatility of Linux

Its all in the mix of Distro and WiFi card. Just as an example I had Slackware and WEP working fine using ndiswrapper and a Linksys WCP54G. I can't get the same card to work with WPA in PCLinux, even though PCLinux has more support for WPA. I think Linux is still a bit hit or miss with true support for WiFi.

[UnseenMenace]

Smoothwall HCL - Hardware Compatability List (http://community.smoothwall.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=11)

[UnseenMenace]

Its all in the mix of Distro and WiFi card. Just as an example I had Slackware and WEP working fine using ndiswrapper and a Linksys WCP54G. I can't get the same card to work with WPA in PCLinux, even though PCLinux has more support for WPA. I think Linux is still a bit hit or miss with true support for WiFi.

I fail to see how you can compare two Linux distribution when you are effectively attempting to achieve two different things on each, the Ndiswrapper module has native WEP support built into it and as such will work on any distribution you get ndiswrapper running on however to achieve WPA support you have to manually configure Ndiswrapper for this purpose as shown here (http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/WPA)
Any suggested increased 'support' for WPA in a specific distro is not of importance when using ndiswrapper because you need to implement this feature in the ndiswrapper module.

I do not think Linux suffers from tru Wi-Fi support and would rather term it as manufacturers of Wi-Fi products do not support Linux... if you choose hardware carefully it works

[klingens]

Both Slack and PCLinux are the same codebase. So both can run the same software. QED. Ultimately it's always "LINUX". NOT Fedora, NOT Debian, NOT Slackware, NOT PCLINUX. It's all the same sourcecode and the sourcecode can do it.
On some a specific thing is harder to do than on others, but they all can do the same thing.

[ErikD]

PCLinux comes with ndiswrapper and wpa_supplicant as a part of the standard packages. Slack doesn't. I was never able to get wpa_supplicant installed and working myself in Slack, just never had enough time to play around with it really.

Yes if you choose carefully I have seen people who get WiFi working fully with WPA in Linux. I still don't see that as being a fully supported. It might be the hardware manufacturers fault ultimately for lack of driver support, I agree on that. To me though it really doesn't matter WHY it won't work, it doesn't change the fact that it doesn't work.

The problem is that from what I see it can't even be as simple as buy brand x cards, they always work, because it is dependant on the actual chipset of the card. You can never know which one was used for sure until the card is bought and installed. I still think that if you want to have a WiFi segment the easiest way to go is just use an AP off of the Smoothwall.