I know ive read a ton websites/books on wireless, but quite simply I value people's opinions. So this thread is just trying to figure out which wireless cards you suggest and whether they are supported in unix/linux environments. Just curious because I need to get myself a new wireless card.

Currently im using a ASUS 100G deluxe which requires downloading ndiswrapper as well as another wrapper just to get it into monitoring mode. Its a bit of a hassle and aireplay doesnt work with the card.

But hey, throw out your suggestions, im all ears.

trix

If you're going for monitor mode it's more important to find the right chipset than particular brand. That said, I have't done any war-driving, etc for a while and I'm really out of the loop on which chipsets are best supported these days. (still use an old linksys card with a Prism II chipset)

-id

yea i hear prism 2 has good support on linux but im reading now that atheros chipsets work even better for monitor mode.

trix

Prim 2 are good ones (only for 802.11b) if can find any.

Atheros-based cards are "hot" right now. I own a Netgear WG511T (801.11b/g) which works perfectly under Linux. Supports Monitor mode of course and is recommended by many.

I've pretty much stuck to my Orinoco gold card. Wardriver's choice: http://www.proxim.com/products/wifi/client/goldpccard/index.html

Stick with the Atheros chipset. It goes the furthest with the tools available today...plus you can do really fun things with the madwifi-ng drivers.

Top cards include Ubiquiti or Senao cards...300 and 400mW outputs mean much greater sensitivity, especially with a good omni-directional or yagi antenna.

What are some good places to buy this type of stuff? Any preferences or preferred vendors?

- RSnake
Gotta love it. http://ha.ckers.org

I get all my gear on ebay. Never had a problem with wireless cards, etc. I have purchased some 15 or so off ebay over the years.

That's good to know. What about the Yagi antennas, etc? Same?

- RSnake
Gotta love it. http://ha.ckers.org

Sure. However, I would problably recommend http://www.hyperlinktech.com. They have everything you need, from antenna to pigtail to connector - with nice RF antenna pattern images to boot.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2006 04:17PM by rsnake.

Very cool, I'll check it out. I hadn't seen that site before.

- RSnake
Gotta love it. http://ha.ckers.org

fogez Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Top cards include Ubiquiti or Senao cards...300 and 400mW outputs mean much greater sensitivity, especially with a good omni-directional or yagi antenna.

actually, no. higher power "outputs" mean "less sensitivity". higher power "inputs" mean "higher sensitivity" and it's measured in negative dBm.

what you're looking for is -98 dBm (best) for receive sensitivity and ADJUSTABLE regulated output IR power (i.e. you want to set the power output to 1W). that is, if you are doing packet capture with no probing. kismet is the ideal application for this (or dstumbler), but software like netstumbler won't work without probes. i prefer quiet packet capture in almost all cases, although with regards to wardriving - you may have better success while probing.

if you're probing or using wifi like a regular person, you'll want an atheros chipset with ~400mW of output power in PCI or mini-PCI, or possibly an 802.11b-only Prism2.5 370mW card in PCMCIA. some people have used Orinoco USB cards to extreme success (e.g. see the wireless challenges a few years back at DEF CON), but i don't know how they did that.

some of the coolest wireless gear that i've found is available at http://www.demarctech.com/ http://www.superpass.com/ http://www.pacwireless.com/ http://www.electro-comm.com/ http://www.wisp-router.com/ and http://www.netgate.com/

I wish I had more time to devote to wireless hacking. Maybe I'll shoot a note to Anton Rager... he might have some comments.

- RSnake
Gotta love it. http://ha.ckers.org

As a couple have posted, it depends what you want to do.

For longer distance intercept (monitor mode) and links, I like prism2/2.5 cards (Senao) as they are avail with Cisco-style mmcx antenna connectors and are senstive recieve as well as strong transmit. I like Linux-wlan-ng drivers with these cards, but hostap works well too. There may be cards with slighly better rx sensitivty, but overall these are goo cards. Here's some links for Senao cards:
http://www.demarctech.com/products/reliawave-rwz/reliawave-rwz-main.html
http://www.netgate.com/product_info.php?products_id=43 (I have several of these)

You'll want a good directional antenna as well.

The older Orinoco cards are nice (and have a similar, but differing antenna connector), but sometimes firmware up/down grades are needed for monitor mode (so I hear - I don't use them). I've found the older Cisco cards to be difficult as they like to jump channels on their own even in monitor mode.

The Atheros cards are also nice (and give a/b/g cvoerage), but the u.fl connectors on the boards are difficult to get pigtails for (and loose some signal due to wire size/etc). Use Madwifi drivers in Linux and they will do monitor mode emulation.

For wardriving and site assessments I like lower senstivity to avoid over-penetration/signal-confusion, and tend to use either stock antennas with Atheros cards (for a/b/g coverage) or a weak external blade omni. Lower senstivity helps determine where APs/nodes are as you can see the power gradient easier.

And as someone else noted, Kismet is an excellent tool for wardriving/site assessments.

For traffic injection, I find prism 2/2.5 firmware limiting (it gets in the way with some things). Atheros doesn't really have a "firmware" and makes it better for crafting arbitrary 802.11 frames. In the past I've hacked up Madwifi for monitor mode + injection with my own toolset, but the last time I looked at Madwifi CVS it appeared they had a similar hack in the driver.

For normal daily use I tend to like Atheros cards.

Hope that helps,
Anton Rager

Glad to have an expert on board! Do you have any info about some of the techniques used at the shootout contests? What gives those antenna such long ranges? Is there any special equipment beyond the antenna itself? Those ultra-long ranges are pretty intriguing.

- RSnake
Gotta love it. http://ha.ckers.org

Thanks for correcting me on that NTP...I had my wires crossed :)

I've had good experience with http://wlanparts.com

In the MadWiFi v.0.9.2 source code it appears that the function ath_calibrate() is called periodically. This function calls ath_hal_getrfgain() and if it returns HAL_RFGAIN_NEED_CHANGE, the function ath_reset() is called. AL_RFGAIN_NEED_CHANGE may mean that new gain values must be loaded, but ath_reset() does many other things including dropping any enqueued frames. As we don't have a datasheet for PHY chip of Atheros PHY (5112), we are not sure but it seems it refers to ath_hal_getrfgain() (as defined in openHAL sources). Could you explain ath_hal_getrfgain() functionality of current HAL(not openHAL), and why does it need a full device reset?

The Orinoco rockS!! Try ebay Rsnake..

http://hackathology.blogspot.com



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/25/2007 01:24AM by hackathology.

If you have PCMCIA or CardBus, get at least one Atheros. If you get a second PCMCIA card (hard to do if you are using built-in antennas because of the overlap), consider a higher-powered second Atheros or Prism2.5 (preferably one without built-in antennas).

If you are stuck with a machine that has no PCMCIA (or you run out of usable slots and want another card for Karma, or injection) - which includes ExpressCard - grab 2 RALink USB radios. These support lorcon and other injection tools better than most other options, so you won't find yourself restricted in what you can do.

I would suggest to get atheros chipset wireless cards that will allow you to use them in any operating system and also make use of packet injection on both windows and linux.


Regards
Glafkos

--
Charalambous Glafkos ( nowayout )
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