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Outdoor WiFi router runs x86 Debian Linux (LinuxDevices)

Outdoor WiFi router runs x86 Debian Linux (LinuxDevices)

Posted Feb 9, 2006 15:45 UTC (Thu) by CyberDog (guest, #29668)
In reply to: Outdoor WiFi router runs x86 Debian Linux (LinuxDevices) by smitty_one_each
Parent article: Outdoor WiFi router runs x86 Debian Linux (LinuxDevices)

Why do so many web servers run Linux/Unix, yet so many clients run Windows?

Answer: the two aren't related. :) Linux is logical for access points for much of the same reasons that it's logical for servers...price, power, customization, size, etc. I really don't think you'll find too many access points running Windows...

Client interfaces, on the other hand, are a matter of what's profitable in the desktop/laptop market, and as usual Linux is not in the same tier as Windows.


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Outdoor WiFi router runs x86 Debian Linux (LinuxDevices)

Posted Feb 10, 2006 22:13 UTC (Fri) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]

Maybe what Smitty meant was at the driver level: these routers have the same chipsets that you find in network cards, and they are running Linux.
Yet, drivers are sometimes difficult to find in the Open World, even closed ones (the Broadcom chipset comes to mind).

Just my 2 centavos...

Outdoor WiFi router runs x86 Debian Linux (LinuxDevices)

Posted Feb 13, 2006 2:56 UTC (Mon) by tjw.org (guest, #20716) [Link]

Yet, drivers are sometimes difficult to find in the Open World, even closed ones (the Broadcom chipset comes to mind).

I think this problem stems from the fact that the intial 802.11g chipset offerings (e.g. Broadcom's) were very closed. The reasoning was that since the radio hardware in these devices was so configurable with software that it could be used to tamper with non 802.11 radio frequencies or some such. More recently, other chipsets have been introduced that support open drivers (e.g. Intrasil's Prism). I think even the closed chipsets are slowly gaining Linux functionality through reverse engineering, but these drivers aren't very stable and most people use the win32 drivers with NDISWrapper still.

More info:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Linux.Wireless.drivers.802.11ag.html

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