Need recommendation for compatible wireless hardware

[Michael Burns]

On Dec 28, 2007 11:07 AM, Carol Lerche <cafl at msbit.com> wrote:

> Does someone know of a USB  wireless card/device that incorporates the
> Marvell chipset and is compatible with the olpc driver?


We talked about this back in March, with the general answer being no. The
only close product I've heard of is the xbox 360 wireless adapter that uses
a related Marvell chipset but, like the thread explains, they are quite
dissimilar in production.

http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-March/004417.html

  I am trying to provision a "school server" on conventional hardware to
> support the four xos that I will be placing in a school.


Awesome.
Just need a normal lowend server with School Server builds installed to
them. There is a guide to using them on the wiki. Purchase a cheap, 4-port
wireless router and you'll be golden. Connect the server to the wired port
of the router and have the 4 xos connect to the wireless network. Set your
jabber servers to the IP address of your 'school server'.
(sugar-control-panel -s jabber 192.168.1.10 or similar, again, check the
wiki). You should be 100% from there.


>   I have just discovered that the xos will not connect to the internet and
> mesh simultaneously unless they themselves are pretending to be a school
> server.


I'm a bit unsure of this one. Where (and in what context) did you hear that?
If an XO joins a wireless network from your house, it will share the
Internet connection over the mesh (which XOs automatically associate to,
allowing for zero-configuration Internet access in some scenarios) to other
machines. This is part of hte standard shipping build unless I am mistaken.

(I note, btw that the Netgear WGT624 is supported by the openwrt project and
> appears to have this chipset...wouldn't it be nice to have a compatible,
> cheap commercial access point that could be used with conventional server
> hardware just by reflashing?  Perhaps someone knows a friendly soul in that
> project.)


An fun weekend project would make a OpenWRT router (with a USB-attached
harddrive, for the Library...) appear as a school server byrunning the
correct jabber daemons, network services and web paths the normal school
server would.

You do not need a school server (generic or custom) to do the following with
2^ or more unmodified XO laptops: (correct me if I'm wrong/out of date,
please)
* have 2 or more XOs mesh, appear in eachother's Neighborhoods and be able
to collaborate/share activities (basic mesh networking)
* 1 or more XOs, in that mesh, can connect to the internet and the other XOs
should be able to make use of that connection *via* the laptop connected,
not directly to the router. (mesh network sharing)
* with a usb->Ethernet dongle, plugging in a network connection to one XO
should also allow other XOs on the same mesh network to access the Internet
through it. (mesh wired-network sharing)


^ a single XO can easily connect to a wireless connection and to the
Internet, or via a usb-ethernet dongle.
-- 
Michael Burns * Student
Open Source {Education} Lab
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