T61p Wireless Cards

There are three wireless cards available when configuring the T61p online:

• ThinkPad 11a/b/g Wi-Fi wireless LAN Mini-PCIe US/EMEA/LA/ANZ [subtract $45.00]
• Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [subtract $40.00]
• Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN

Which has the best Linux support, preferably with injection?

 

• ThinkPad 11a/b/g Wi-Fi wireless LAN Mini-PCIe US/EMEA/LA/ANZ [subtract $45.00]

Good support, IF the card is the Atheros AR5BXB6 Mini-PCI Express card. Atheros is one of two wifi manufacturers that has been supported with native drivers under Linux, Intel being the other manufacturer.

• Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [subtract $40.00]

Good support. There are 2 drivers in Linux to choose from. The ipw3945 (daemon) driver which is pretty stable. And the newer iwlwifi driver which is still being developed so it's a little bit tougher to install and might be unstable. (In the future expect the iwlwifi driver to be the right one to use.)

• Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN

Ok support. The newer iwlwifi drivers are the only one that support this card, so the beta drivers now work, but they might be a bit unstable..

Intel's support for Linux exists at the corporate level. So drivers for their wifi chipsets, and graphic chipsets are produced by Intel engineers. Atheros support is done through the MadWiFi project which is blessed by Atheros, which I see as different.

If it were me, (and when I get my new laptop), I would get the latest and greatest Intel wifi and then wait for the drivers to catch up. In this case it would mean going with the 4965AGN.. Good Luck..

Open Source project site for MadWifi
Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Driver for Linux
Intel® Wireless WiFi Link drivers for Linux*

 

Hi jas, thanks for your informative reply. I have a couple follow-up questions:

Is there another possible Atheros card that it could be? Is this one not as well supported, and if I called Lenono would they be able to give me the exact model number?

For the Intels, I did a bit of reading and it seemed the ipw3945 ran a bunch of proprietary binary code, and both had systems in place to prevent setting parameters for better performance. Is this something to be worried about?

Also I am still uncertain which (if any) have better packet injection support.

Thanks

 

I think that it's probably that Atheros card, but you could always try getting the info from Lenovo. They might give it to you, or they might try and tell you it's made by IBM. Read this thread for a more in depth discussion on the subject.

The first Intel driver I linked to, did include a binary-only daemon, but the newer iwlwifi project does provide a binary-daemon-free driver. I think that while the first driver effort from Intel wasn't perfect, by the Linux community pushing back like it did, it got Intel to do it better the second time. BTW, Atheros needs to provide a binary hardware abstraction layer (HAL) to the MadWiFi project too, so you never get binaries out of the mix totally, but the difference is between providing binary (proprietary closed source) code in the form of microcode that gets loaded by open source drivers (good, like madwifi and iwlwifi), or a userland binary only daemon (bad like ipw3945d).

I don't think that the Intel approach limits the ability to tweak for performance, or for power savings, etc. But you have pointed out an area where tweaks may be limited. In terms of packet injection most posts I read seem to indicate it's difficult using Intel's wifi chipset, although folks are working on an IPRAW driver for the iwlwifi project to do this with the 3945 and 4965 chipsets. There had been some patches to get the ipw2200 architecture to work too. If tried and true packet injection support was important to me, I would probably go the Atheros route when buying new.

BTW, if you want a definitive answer from the experts, you could always visit places like the Thinkpad user forums. Lastly you could always try pinging the mailing lists for both the iwlwifi and madwifi projects and seeing what their response is. Feel free to update this thread with what you find out..

Good Luck..