WIRELESS--good or bad???

[billniceguy]

I live in RV park, and a company is selling wireless to people living in trailers here. As the local computer tech i have been advising them, selling and repairing their computers. This new company XpresStream out of Los Angeles, CA came in and sold to a few of the people who have been having many problems. We had a meeting and there were many complaints. I wont go into details here, but problems ranged from poor connections to no service, etc.
One odd thing the salesman said was that the wireless card can make a great deal of difference. He had his laptop there with an orinoco gold pcmcia 802.11b client card. he claimed he was getting excellent right there on the meeting altho he could not tell what the connection figure was. A lady came in with her laptop just 10 feet away and got poor reception or connection. The salesman claimed that his card was better than her linksys wpc11 pcmcia card.
I know linksys is a good and big company, but dont know of orinoco.
Next he said the pole they installed to give line of sight to the 800 trailers in the park could not go higher as then outsiders could steal the signal. As it is now, about a third of the people cannot get a signal. He says no one will ever be agle to get an excellent signal all the time.
I mentioned a 48-hours tv program with cris wallace where he and another man with a laptop walked down street of nyc and was able to show right on his screen what 14 different apartments was looking at. In other words he was able to hack their system. This salesman said that couldnt happen with his system.
I asked him if they had 802.11g wireless and he said no, they have the b, yet the g is advertised as 5x times faster than b.
BOTTOM LINE: What should i tell the residents of our park, several of who have cancelled the service already. Is wifi sufficiently debugged? Should we wait? This company is shown as a 2003 startup company that wants to specialize in rv trailer parks.
Can anyone give me good info that i might pass along? Thanks, Bill

[M_Six]

Orinoco Gold cards are the best, IMO. I have a pure Linksys network at home EXCEPT for my wireless card. I did some pretty extensive research and found rave reviews for the Orinoco card and so-so reviews for the Linksys card. My Orinoco card gives me excellent reception everywhere in my house.

That said, I would be concerned about the security of a wireless setup like that. Is he using WEP or WPI? Is he using MAC filtering? Or a VPN setup? As a bare minimum, he should have WEP and MAC filtering. And I wouldn't trust anything that wasn't using a VPN setup. The problem with all the security is that it cuts into the bandwidth. That will be more of an issue with 802.11b. Still, if he has a T-1 or cable connection for traffic out to the internet, he's only getting 1.5Mbps anyway, so the loss of bandwidth between the wireless clients and his router isn't that big a deal, I guess.

If he is using a T-1 or cable/dsl connection to pass traffic to the internet, then all the folks in the park are sharing that bandwidth. That'll make it slow, too.

How much is he charging?

[billniceguy]

He shares a T-1 and snowbirds are here 6 months and 6 months in canada or washington, etc, so he has a weekly, monthly and 6 month charge. I believe the 6 month charge is about 35.00 permonth. Thanks for the info m_six...i will forward your questions to them..im not a wireless pro, so the wep, wpi, mac filtering or vpn info is not my area. I build computers and trouble shoot, but no wireless experience. Any additional info u can share will be appreciated, and i will advise u when he answers my questions, thanks, Bill

Orinoco Gold cards are GREAT cards!

Linksys cards cant even touch them.

M_six questions are very important for the person to answer.

[billniceguy]

exactly what questions should i ask them? What is average price per month for wireless? Thanks, Bill

Is he using WEP or WPA? Is he using MAC filtering? Or a VPN setup? or other secuirty does he have set up on the wireless

worry about those first before price

[DVNT1]

Originally posted by billniceguy
...I mentioned a 48-hours tv program with cris wallace where he and another man with a laptop walked down street of nyc and was able to show right on his screen what 14 different apartments was looking at. In other words he was able to hack their system. This salesman said that couldnt happen with his system...

802.11b right out of the box is not secure. Even with 128bit WEP and MAC filtering it is "hackable". If they are using a 3rd party software for security then it may be more accurate. Otherwise, he is just an ignorant salesman in relation to real wireless security.

That said, the most common problem is people using the said Internet connection without paying. Another likely problem is someone using that wireless connection with a paying customer's someone else's MAC address so that it is hard to trace activity back to the real computer. The blame for any malicious activity goes back to the paying subscriber and not the true criminal.

Btw, Orinoco used to be Lucent, and now has even changed to Proxim. Great wireless cards.

[kwebb]

Proxim (orinoco) cards would certainly give a better link back to the AP than a Linksys card. Linksys makes decent, decent perhaps being a bit kind, SOHO gear. There AP's and AP/Router combo units are about as good as any other consumer based wireless hardware maker. Their client cards on the other hand are notoriously bad. Proxim's aren't the best 802.11b cards, but for the price they are. They are competitive with Cisco cards in most areas, and much much cheaper. Really a no brainer for the budget minded buyer that still wants enterprise solution performance. Doesn't sound like the guy your dealing knows alot about what he's selling. I'd be bypassing him alltogether and deal with a technician. Even their installers could be suspect. Top level engineer or supervisor is who you should be directing your questions to. WPA is the contemporary security measure, and maintains a pretty tight lock as long as the password is at least 20 characters. If they really have their act together they will have the clients using something beyond what most consumer based cards are capable of. If they are on the ball, they'd sell their own package solutions, and not allow users to buy their own client cards. Might lose them some business (might also keep some though) but for sure it would cut down on the trouble calls.

Wow, I didn't know Linksys cards were that bad. Mine works better than the other cantenna card I had.

Aren't there some other venders making Orinoco cards under a different name though?