[Soekris] PCMCIA + MiniPCI cards in net 4511

[Christopher R. Hertel]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2004 at 05:47:15PM -0400, Henry Spencer wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Christopher R. Hertel wrote:
> > I work at a big University.  We still have a pile of those old Orinoco 
> > AP-1000's in production.  They've got two PCMCIA slots right next to one 
> > another for two radios.  We use them in large lecture halls to get extra 
> > bandwith.
> > Works.
> 
> Oh, I don't say it *can't* work, just that the odds are against it.  And
> the more ambitious you get -- distance, 802.11 type, etc. -- the worse the
> odds get.  Don't lose the radio cards that work; others might not. 

Our hope had been that we would see more 802.11b/g/a combo radios in
laptops and palmtops.  Then we'd install 802.11a radios scattered about in
large lecture halls (we have some that seat 1000).  The annoyance then
would be forcing load balancing, but hey...

The practical problem is that there simply isn't enough bandwidth
available if 1000 people are all trying to run 802.11 in a single space.  
We ran into this the last time the IETF held a meeting in Minneapolis (a
quaint suburb of St. Paul).  When the APs were cranked down low enough to
force localized cells in the room, the W/XP and MacOSX clients would
automagically switch into ad-hoc mode and everyone around them would be
sucked in.

Whee!

Chris -)-----

-- 
"Implementing CIFS - the Common Internet FileSystem" ISBN: 013047116X
Samba Team -- http://www.samba.org/     -)-----   Christopher R. Hertel
jCIFS Team -- http://jcifs.samba.org/   -)-----   ubiqx development, uninq.
ubiqx Team -- http://www.ubiqx.org/     -)-----   crh at ubiqx.mn.org
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