Compras Nikon Bluetooth |
We use the 350s at work and they are just great, solid, predictable cards. For the price difference, unless you have a homogeneous 54G environment, the 350s are winner.
My choice for ease of use and consistent performance.
Plus, I like the Cisco monitoring software, profiles, etc. When I go out of town, I set up a new profile and almost always can get associated right away with whatever wireless provider ( maybe except for the Spokane airport but that's a different rant ).
The software has some good diagnostic tools to test the link status and performance and proves that this is a standard Cisco product. The automatic network detection and switching makes it even better to seamlessly move from the office to home and to Starbucks if you like, without much hassle (I haven't tried it in starbucks personally though).
One small issue. The Aironet Client Monitoring software disables the fast switching capability in the Windows XP and gives the typical Windows 2000 login screen. Though not a big problem for me, it might be a serious issue for some.
Except for the price, the product is very likable. If you are more conscious about price, you might want to try the linksys alternative (from Cisco/Linksys group afterall)
Setup was a breeze, solid equipment.
The problem came when i tried to install the driver for my brother and girlfriend's laptop. On one laptop the system hung at the end of the installation and on the other when the computer was trying to detect the hardware.
Cutting the long story short, i figured the system had just managed to install the software before it hang and thus after rebooting the laptop i could get online. whats interesting is that i didn't have to install the ACU or the card's firmware to get it to work. Well, as long as it works.... =P
Compared to linksys or netgear wireless lan cards, this one give a much better 'feel' to its build and looks a whole lot more sturdy than any other cards i've seen. and of course its from a better brand too (if it matters at all).
I guess if you're willing to fork out more than double the price for a somewhat more 'professional' card i guess this is it. if not, i would recommend the netgear MA401 card as i have absolutely no problems setting a couple of them up on my network.
One thing you can do with this card that you can't with others is modify the transmit power for the card. The primary difference between the Cisco 340 and 350 series is the transmit power. On the 350 you can change this from 1mw to 100mw (the 340 series peaks at 30mw). This feature is especially handy, especially when taking my laptop from work to home (you just don't need 100mw of transmit power in a 1200 ft. apartment).
The hardware is great (Cisco acquired Aironet around 97 I think), the software is intuitive, and is fully compatible with many authentication methods other than wep (i.e., TLS, MD5, EAP, LEAP).
So why did I give this card a 4 star rating instead of 5 stars? Three reasons:
Client side software does not roam between discontiguous networks when using advanced authentication
Client side software does not include any kind of sniff feature to see what wireless networks are within range. I have to use third party software for that.
Cisco cards do not do true rfmon passive packet acquisition. Cisco (and I think Lucent) diverged from the prism 2 chip , so i keep my Cisco card for work and keep a linksys wpc11 (prism2 chipset) for "network analysis".
Hope this helps. Peace to all wifi junkies out there.
All men know the utility of useful things;
but they do not know the utility of futility.
-- Chuang-tzu
The only person who always got his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.
