10 May 01 Technical Report - Orinoco Setup and Performance out-of-the-box SETUP ----- Assuming you are using Windows (95/98/ME...) you will find the Orinoco cards can be used to create a windows peer-to-peer network (just like wired ethernet). You can access through Network Neighbourhood. I have just started playing with equipment yesterday and started with an RG-1000 kit (includes RG-1000 with UK power supply, a wireless PCMCIA card and software), cost about £320 and an ISA converter card for my desktop (not needed if you are using a laptop with type II PCMCIA slot), cost about £60 (inc vat). Orinoco Wireless PC cards bought separately are about £100 at present. The config then is: +-----------------+ +-------+ +-----------------+ |PC1|Ethernet card|---|RG1000 |~~ ~~|Wireless Card|PC2| +-----------------+ +-------+ +-----------------+ PC1 Software: None - only ethernet card driver PC2 Software: (a) Java based RG Setup Utility used to upload/download? config info (network name, encryption key, etc.) to the RG1000 cmos. Size 20MB, requires 32MB RAM and Java environment. (b) Client Manager: Used to configure the wireless card for use with: 1.Access Point 2.Residential Gateway (RG) or 3.Peer-to-peer environments and to set network name security (encryption) key. (size 500KB, runs in 16KB RAM or less) (c) the PCMCIA card driver. Small size. Additionally, if you need a converter (to let your desktop use PCMCIA cards) the driver for that has to be loaded from the win 95/98/ME setup disk/CD. The simplest and cheapest config would be if you had two laptops, with minimum spec: 486/66 16Mb RAM 170Mb Hard Disk and floppy disk drive and PCMCIA card Type II slot. The Client Manager and card drivers fit onto floppy disk. Then you would just need two Orinoco PC cards. Each laptop would need to run the Client manager and the PC card driver. (WARNING I have not tried this yet so it may not be as I think). +-----------------+ +-----------------+ |PC1|Wireless card|~~ ~~|Wireless Card|PC2| +-----------------+ +-----------------+ You could add ethernet cards to PC1 and PC2 to give wired access to many more computers at each location. You could add similar PC3, PC4, etc. The PC cards have an integral antenna which has a range of up to 400M. (I've only tried over shorter distances so cant confirm this.) PERFORMANCE ----------- Although the stated transmission rate is 11Mbit/sec, I got transmission speeds of under 3Mbit/sec (using a 40MB test file) and measuring elapsed time - but it seems to transmit at almost this speed in both directions at the same time (a bit more testing needed as I have not looked into "tuning" yet). It goes the same speed using 16MB 486/66, 32MB P100 and 64MB P300. Transmission in the reverse direction (back to the computer connected to the RG1000) was at about half the speed of that the forward direction. The detailed "copy" times for the 40Mb file were: Computer A Computer B Direction Time ---------- ---------- --------- ---- 486/66 P100 A-B 1m50 486/66 P100 B-A 4m15 P300 P100 B-A 4m30 P300 P100 A-B 1m50 486/66 486/66 A-B 2m05 486/66 486/66 B-A 4m10 The network was configured as an RG-1000 network (rather than a peer-to-peer workgroup). The transmission was encrypted (using standard Silver card 64bit WEP). It may be faster without encyption - which can be turned off when using peer-to-peer workgroups. It was interesting to note that "video streaming" was not necessary to play fullscreen video because the transmission speed (2.7Mbit/s) was more than adequate to play video needing 400Kbit/s continuously. Many programs can be run from remote computers almost as quick as if they were on a local hard disk. This may be a good way of working for those with computers such as 486/66s with small hard disks (e.g 210Mb). [This would not work for programs needing windows link libraries]. OTHER NOTES ----------- If you need to transmit over longer distances, you will need to get (two or more) external antennae. They are expensive at about £250 (with pigtail connector and lightning protector). They have to meet safety, interference and compatibility standards. What I have described is Orinoco out-of-the-box. If you want to setup a proper "Consume" network you need to use the Linux or FreeBSD software as described at www.consume.net You then get more sophisticated routing (I believe). From Paul Clarke E-mail: swimsite@freeuk.com For L&D Community Network http://www.wlan.freeuk.com