Julian Thomas wrote: > On Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:31:33 -0400 fred smith wrote: > >> >>> David McGuffey wrote: >>> >>>> Have decided to give up on the embedded Broadcom 4312 wireless device in >>>> my son's Dell laptop. I get WEP open authentication to work, but >>>> nothing else. I was about to dump the bcm43xx kernel module and the >>>> bcm43xx-microcode5.fw firmware and work with the newer b43 module and >>>> associated firmware. However, he claims that at school, he has always >>>> had intermittent problems with wireless under Vista and wants an >>>> external device (USB or PCMCIA). >>>> > > Why not look at a small access point that plugs into the RJ45 and uses USB for power? DLink DWL-G730AP or > other equivalent. If it really is an AP, it won't do the job, as an AP cannot be a client to another AP. 802.11 DOES have the concept of a wireless backbone, called WDS (wireless distribution system), but it is not yet defined (Work In Progress: 802.11s, I am a contributor to the security features). So each vendor has its own WDS implementation (MIT's OnePC implements part of draft 1 of 802.11s). Of course there are devices out there that are referred to as wireless bridges (Linksys WRT54g is one) that act as a client and bridges an ethernet as a single client to the AP. Note that a wireless bridge is NOT an AP. Of course there are probably devices out there that can be configured either way.... Note, I work on the 802.11 standards and know them well, but I don't know of all the flavors of implementations out in the wild.