Cross-brand compatibility with WAP & WNIC

[david7777777777]

I'm setting up a WLAN. So far I've used a Buffalo "g" WAP and I could not get my D-Link DWL-650 "b" WNIC to connect to it, not even at 4 feet away. I had Buffalo on the phone and they couldn't even get it to connect, not even after upgrading the firmware on the Buffalo WAP.

The D-Link NIC could "see" the signal from the Buffalo WAP just fine, but when I tried to "connect" the D-Link NIC would try to connect but it would just never connect. It never gave any error messages either. Buffalo had me disable WEP on both devices but that didn't work either. They did mention that one manufacturer's implementation of WEP might not be compatible with another manufacturer's implemntation of WEP. That's the first time I've heard that. Great.

Does anyone have any experience and tips for getting a WAP from one manufacturer to work with a wirelss NIC from another manufacturer? Is this a problem in the real world of WLANs? My gut is now telling me not to mix brands when building a WLAN. Thanks.

 

[bcastner]

As a good general rule, you can do Wireless Distribution within limits only on same manufacturer's boxes.

For mesh or other distribution of wireless between APs, it is very unlikely that different brands will speak to each other. Very unlikely. And certainly not at the present time possible.

For the truely brave, Seavsoft and others promise to use Broadcom-based chipset devices in a Wireless Distributed setting at some point, including the Linksys WRT54G and the Buffalo equivalent. This is likely sooner to appear with the wireless router products than the Access Points.

http://seattlewireless.net/?LinksysWrt54g#head-91dd746949e966913289a582d93a153b26b9a987

But not here today, and not soon, and not very easily.

 

[bcastner]

As a direct question to using a D-Link client adapter to connect to Buffalo or Linksys or whatever, there should be no issue as long as any "special" features are disabled. If the AP or Router offers a special "Turbo" mode in addition to plain "B" or plain "G", disable it. The same for the client adapter.

Straight "B" or straigh "G" should work fine between manufacturers that are Wi-Fi certified.

 

[david7777777777]

valuable info sir, thanks. I've realized that I simply need to boost my knowledge and hands-on experience with all of this stuff by running some tests. I even saw some home-made antennas on free antennas dot com. I'll be conducting some tests over the next day or two so I can have my own collection of T&E: trial and error. I'm sure I'll be back with more questions soon. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.