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Wednesday, March 12, 2003 |
Faking AirPort ExtremeApple's latest wireless offering, AirPort Extreme, uses the not-yet-standard 802.11g protocol, which is much faster than the previous 802.11b version of AirPort. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on any previous AirPort-compatible Mac (bus is too slow).
Naturally, someone has come up with a way around this "limitation" :)
I got a Linksys WAP54G Wireless 54g Access Point for $130, and Linksys WPC54G Wireless 54g PC Card for $70, both from Amazon.com.
The access point works out of the box with any AirPort card using the slower protocol, but the PC card is not recognized by MacOS X. The instructions for hacking your system to recognize the card can be found here.
It worked fine after running the Perl script as directed, but there are a few things worth noting; mainly that there's no GUI to see what you're doing or if it's working. It's similar to what happened when Apple left AirPort support out of the OS X Public Beta - someone came up with a hack that worked, but it was definitely a temporary solution.
My Ti PowerBook hung when I tried to boot with the PC card inserted, but worked fine when I put the card in after booting was complete. It's fine to pull the card out for transport while the machine's sleeping and put it back in before waking up, but you must be very quiet
Another quirk is that you need to use the Internet Connect app to select the access point using your Network Control Panel's AirPort configuration (even though it's not really AirPort), and the setting is forgotten when the machine sleeps - you need to re-select the access point after waking up.
The benefits I experience when using 802.11g are increased speed and range.
The signal was better moving my laptop farther from the access point when using the Linksys system then with the AirPort system, but I suspect this is mostly due to the Linksys card's external antenna. Titanium G4 PowerBooks are famous for lousy AirPort reception.
As for speed, the AirPort system is already faster than a T1 connection, so it's irrelevant for web, e-mail, etc. However, it's significantly faster when accessing files on my Jaguar server. This has always been a gripe of mine, because the OS X finder is already sluggish when compared to OS 9. Add slow file transfer speeds on top of that, and it's not a pretty sight.
Everyone using AirPort with OS X on their laptops in the office was complaining about things being really slow, so 802.11g may be a good solution once the standard has been approved.
By the way, RFMon is an interesting mailing list for anyone looking into wireless (particularly if you like building stuff out of junk like Pringles cans!). It's focused on the DC metro area, but there are similar organizations around the U.S.
Lastly, MacStumbler is a great tool for seeing what kind of waves are going through you head.
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