Quote:
Originally Posted by PeriEEErgos
so you are suggesting not to go with the tp link buy?i ve read in the forum that is it works out of the box
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I do not know where did you come up with yet another vendor TP-Link. The only vendors that were mentioned on this thread was either Linksys or Netgear.
Apart from that, I have little to no experience with TP-Link's versioning scheme. Vendors who fail to make their model and/or version visible on the cardboard packaging that you usually get when you buy it from the shop tend to be the ones that I find are dodgy and/or lazy.
Model + version is very important because not all vendors will re-sell chipsets from manufacturers whom chooses to support alternative platform like linux, *bsd, macs, etc. Most of them in my opinion target mainly at windows users whom doesn't need to care about which manufacturer is the chipset that's contained inside the device they have bought. They are more concerned about getting it to work.
Unfortunately non-windows users do not benefit from this because its either the vendors and/or manufacturers that choose not to support the non-windows community or to provide them with limited support. There are workarounds such as the use of ndiswrapper/linuxant which should work in a fair amount of cases along with at times manufacturers that also produce their own proprietary driver. These drivers not always have the same functionality as the community built drivers for the manufacturer chipsets, mainly features like rfmon and injection are missing because its either not coded into the driver or because for whatever other reason there are no support on such modes.
By vendors I mean brands like: Netgear, Trendnet, Linksys, D-Link, TP-Link, Ubiquiti, Alfa, Senao, Belkin, Edimax, Hawking, etc. These vendors do not actually manufacture the chipset which is inside the device they made it in but its more of re-packaging and including brand names, tags, etc.
By manufacturers (specifically in wireless case) I mean like: Atheros, Ralink, Intel, Zydas, Intersil, Conexant, Atmel, TI, SiS, Broadcom, etc. These companies actually make the chipset that sits inside the devices of which vendors sells it in. Hardly the manufacturers themselves manufacture both chipset and the card together (Intel for example does that). Even if they do, chances are it will only be a reference board for vendors.
In other words, the brand names you see in the shops does not always carry their own branded chipset inside and this is where it stuffs up many non-windows users.
Brands like, Belkin (I've heard) and Netgear by far are the worst vendors when it comes to their model and revisions. Netgear mixes different manufacturer chipsets into the same model and revision, twice I have seen them doing it. Google for WG511 and WG111.
Then comes to brands like, Linksys, 3com and Trendnet where the versions of that specific device is actually on the device itself not on the packaging box which makes one needing to open the box (thus making it hard to get a refund/exchange in a fair few cases) just to find which version it has.
D-Link I would personally recommend. Apart from wireless cards and dongles, D-Link seems to suck at every other device versioning but with wireless cards and dongles they made it clear which hardware version and firmware version on the packaging box itself. If you check
madwifi-project.org - Trac under Compatibility/D-Link section you will see what I mean when it comes to those versioning. This is probably the most ideal scenario where you won't need to open the packaging box or plug and pray.
Back to the point, I bought a pair of TP-Link wired cards. The packaging box shows a picture of two wired cards with different chipset and layout. One was Realtek chipset and the other one was Marvell. It has two different model numbers as well as a checkbox but there's no clear indication of which card has which model number on the box in that instance which made me having to buy it before I can open and check which chipset it has. This is only one off instance but may serve as a precaution
