Wifi USB Dongle

[archived]

I'm thinking to connect a MD/Orbiter to the rest of the home network via wireless connection and I'm considering to use Wifi dongle (there's a nice bundle from D-Link where they sell a DSL wireless router and a USB Wifi dongle).

Are these kind of devices supported and easily configurable under the Pluto distro of Debian?

Has anyone some advice on specific hardware to use/avoid?

TIA
Marco

[archived]

I wouldn't recommend trying to run an m/d that you will be streaming video to on wi-fi.  We've tried it, but wi-fi is inherintly too unreliable for sustained high-bandwidth video.  Orbiter's and GUI's are ok.  We've never tried the usb dongles--we always use external wi-fi access points & switches, with the pc's connected over normal ethernet to the access poing.  So I'm not sure if the usb wi-fi adapter runs under linux.  You may want to check the linux compatibility guides.  Our Debian distro is quite vanilla--it's the same process to configure it with Pluto as with stock debian, and we didn't take anything out.

[archived]

Thanks Aaron for your quick reply.

According to what is listed on http://www.linux-wlan.org some USB Wifi dongles are known to be supported in linux while also other ones may be OK but yet to verify, so if you didn't take anything out from Debian distro I expect that some of them may work also for me.

I agree with you that streaming video on a wifi connection may result in poor performances.
The point is that I don't have network plug over the house, and the phone plug (where DSL service is available) is not located in a good position to fit all needs.

Placing new cables inside the wall is not an option (I'm living in a rented apartment, when I'll move to my new house everything will be possible), neither fixing cables on the wall across doors and rooms (my small kids would LOVE to rip everything out ... :roll: ).

So my idea is to find (with some advice and some trial and error ...) a reasonable compromise in order to have everything connected and decently working.

At the moment I have 2 option:

keep a dedicated core close to phone/DSL plug and put a wireless MD close to tv/stereo set

locate an hybrid close to tv set with a wireless connection to DSL router

Either way I have to deal with wifi devices under Debian, and I would prefer USB dongles as they are easily movable to other boxes.

As soon I get all the needed hardware I will try some configuration and will let you know.

Thanks again and regards

Marco

[archived]

There's also PLC networking.  They say (though i haven't seen it first hand) it's more reliable and higher bandwidth than wi-fi.

[archived]

This is the kind of advice I was hoping for ...

I didn't consider PLC networking, but after your suggestion I've done some search over internet and I've found some interesting devices that may be worth a try.
I've seen Devolo devices, that seems to be the first providing linux support. They are talking about 14Mbs bandwidth and for some devices up to 85 Mbs, that sounds good for our needs.

Now I need to make some more investigation on how reliable this bandwidth actually is, and then I will decide how to proceed.

In the mean time, thanks a lot for your idea.

Regards
Marco