WiFi cards, Intel laptop cards, Software AP / Ad-Hoc, Remote Desktop...

[Formula350]

Get comfortable, because I just did

Alright I'm going to do my best to keep this as coherent as possible, but I figured it'd be less "spamful" if I made one post, instead of at least 3 separate ones. With that being said, I'm going to try and get the easier questions out first, so anyone stopping in to help on a particular point will not have to read through everything in order to get to that question. Also I'll point out where one question ends and another begins

Question 1: What is generally the best when it comes to WiFi (chips basically)?

Up until more recently, all I really had experience with was the Atheros 5007EG in this laptop. My friend has a Marvel TopDog in his laptop, but I never had any real experience with it other than knowing it was able to pick up quite a few wireless networks that his girlfriend's laptop couldn't. I recently traded someone for a partial laptop (oooooh we'll get to that in the Soft AP portion lol) and it had a mini-PCIe Broadcom 4311, which when I went on vacation I brought just the wifi card with to test out. Reason was is I knew my neighbor's had wifi and I knew how well (or not well to be honest) this Atheros was able to pick them up. To keep a long story short, the Broadcom walked all over the Atheros. However there was one fairly large downside, the Broadcom had an issue of not wanting to update when I changed a driver setting, Windows' Wireless Network manager would act like the card was shut up... Sometimes it was easier/faster to just reinstall the driver, which kept the registry settings and thus my changed setting. So really it was only good once I got it for-surely set how I wanted. The Broadcom also doesn't seems to drop the connection, either at all or only a fraction that this Atheros has been.

Question 1-A: I've not had any experience with the Intel based cards, but a friend got a new laptop with the 5100 card and he says it's fantastic. One issue I'm wondering about though is it's compatibility with AMD chipsets? Reason I ask is that this eBay auction I was looking at says: "Not for IBM and HP.Only for laptop with Intel chipset". Also how good are they? The 3945 is well with in my price range, the 4965 is still, and the 5100 is borderline. 5150, 5300, 5350, 6300 etc are pretty much out of the question though.

Now while I'd love to use it in that partial laptop, I already know it's fussy about what wireless card you use in it, since the thing wouldn't even POST with this Atheros card in there -_- So even IF the Intel cards are compatible, I'm sure the laptop won't allow it anyways :\ I'd still be interested in it for my desktop though, as I'd get a mPCIe to PCIe adapter. This laptop I'm not as worried about since it is Intel through and through.

Question 1-B: In the instance that the Intel chips aren't going to work on AMD (my desktop), I also have a mini PCI Broadcom "BCM94318MPG" card, how are they in terms of abilities to hold a signal and then transmit through a house?

None of the laptops I have access to have a mPCI slot, and the laptop I got it from was dead. The only reason I took it from my friend was for parts as it would've otherwise gone in the trash

Question 1-C: Alfa 500mW to 2000mW USB adapters, I know they are apparently pretty good, but anyone have any experience with them? Know the safe distance away from a person that the 1000mW and 2000mW should be? lol
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To try and give a very very quick, and hopefully detailed enough, back story to why I'm trying to do what I'm doing: I decided to move with my parents down to Tennessee and contrary to what AT&T told us before we even left Minnesota, we can't get DSL where we built our house. We've been told many excuses and from what I can tell, the long and short of it is that AT&T are a bunch of lazy fucks and they don't want to run a new phone line up our 1/5th mile, 4 resident street. To top that off, we have ZERO alternative for land-based broadband. To even top that, our cellular signal in our area is absolute shit. AT&T Wireless has no signal, Sprint and T-Mobile are flaky at best, and Verizon (which is the main carrier in the area) is good ONLY if you are outside or the cell phone is propped up against a window! So we have Verizon Wireless Broadband lol The WWAN modem is upstairs in my aunt's part of the house (oh and she's a crazy cat lady, how much more awesome could my situation get!?), TAPED to the inside of the window, just to get 2 bars. I actually can get 3-4 bars if I use out old satellite dish and tape the modem to the focal point of the parabola (basically on the plastic eye of the receiver), but that requires leaving a PC outside and it just isn't feasible. So her laptop stays inside, on most of the time and serves WiFi down in our part of the house via Ad-Hoc.

This is where that partial laptop (basically everyone except the screen) comes in, as I'd use it as an Access Point, put it up in the attic with my goofy "Sat-Dish Passive Parabolic Antenna" and use it to connect to the WWAN and serve the house internet If I had the money to buy a WWAN capable Wireless Router, I would've, so that's why I'm trying to do what I am The Cradlepoint that is ideal for my house is around $100

Question 2: How can I get it so that Windows Vista and/or Windows 7 will connect to either an Ad-Hoc currently in play, or initiate the connection I have already configured?

Question 3: Since I haven't been able to figure out a way to get a computer to do that of the above question, I've been trying to find free/cheap alternative methods of making a computer work as an Access Point. While searching I came across this tutorial for Windows 7 on how to set up a computer to utilize a Virtual Wireless Connection. My understanding from it is that I can essentially have my single wireless adapter connect to two different devices simultaneously, this allowing me to connect to my aunt's computer and then have my desktop connect to this computer. However in my execution of this once I set up this "Virtual AP" and have my desktop connect to it, then proceed to connect to my aunt's laptop, the Virtual AP disappears... Anyone know what I'm doing wrong, or am I simply misunderstanding how that works? If it'll let a single card to allow multiple connections, and share internet through the WWAN, then I can use the laptop base to function as my Virtual AP.

Question 4: If I can get the Virtual AP to function as I plan, I'm pretty sure I can make a single batch and drop it into the Startup folder... Though with everything being in the attic, I would not have easy access to it which is where Remote Desktop comes in. I'm a noob in this area and the only time I've gotten it to work was between my laptop and desktop which were wired. Even then I had to confirm the connection request, and that makes it pretty useless to me since the computer I'd be connecting to wouldn't be in reach, let along even have a screen to click on "OK"! So I'm wondering if anyone knows how I can configure Windows to automatically accept a remote connection?

BONUS QUESTION: I recently have used 7's (similar in Vista) recovery system, which utilizes WinPE, and really started to be taken in by how much functionality you have in it. So I did some research and found I'm not the only one, and folks have taken it a step further, making what I consider to be Win7 Lite or Win7 Portable with program called Make_PE3. You have almost all of Win7 features in a compressed file size of (for my very feature-packed version) 250mb! Put it on a flash drive, make it bootable, and it all loads into RAM (oh I had fun with CrystalDiskMark heh). So any GuRu around wise in the WinPE field that could basically turn that laptop base into a solid-state AP?

I mean ideally I'd use a HDD, but the one for it is bad and I don't have any 2.5" SATA drives, nor can the laptop accept a SATA cable So if I could boot off a USB drive and have everything boot and setup, configured and ready to function as an AP, that would be bad ass!


And now that my fingers hurt, I'm going to watch some TV!

Thanks to anyone who has made it down this far, I appreciate it!

 

[Formula350]

A little bump action...

 

[Completely Bonkers]

but I figured it'd be less "spamful" if I made one post, instead of at least 3 separate ones.

I suggest you simplify your questions. Ask just one question. Build your knowledge one step at a time. Don't bore the experts here that could help you with such a long ramble. I gave up before I even got half way

But I will answer your first question: Often it is the aerial (size/power/quality) not the chipset that provides range, and it is the chipset/drivers that provide stability and features. I don't think you can say conclusively that one brand of chipset is better than another brand, but you WILL find that one chipset is better than another, whether the same brand, or another. I am interested in hearing from those that have specific chipsets to recommend.

Thanks to anyone who has made it down this far, I appreciate it!

Nobody will! (I skipped to the last line, LOL)

 

[Formula350]

I suggest you simplify your questions. Ask just one question. Build your knowledge one step at a time. Don't bore the experts here that could help you with such a long ramble. I gave up before I even got half way

I know but I didn't want to spam the forums with 2-5 individual threads That's why I also had made the question lines bold and tried to space out the part that had to do with the question, from the part that was more just info pertaining to it.

But I will answer your first question: Often it is the aerial (size/power/quality) not the chipset that provides range, and it is the chipset/drivers that provide stability and features. I don't think you can say conclusively that one brand of chipset is better than another brand, but you WILL find that one chipset is better than another, whether the same brand, or another. I am interested in hearing from those that have specific chipsets to recommend.

Nobody will! (I skipped to the last line, LOL)

Well I do understand that it's a combining factor of the band spectrum (spectrum band? Whatever, frequency! ) with the chip's capable power output which basically determines it's range. 2.4GHz providing a longer range than 5GHz, and the more typical (I believe) 100mW not having as much power as say a 300mW, or even some of the crazier 2000mW USB models I saw from Alfa.

The reason I mentioned Broadcom, Marvell, Atheros and Intel (Also is Ralink but I didn't even know of them up until a week or two ago) is because they are the folks making the chips. I'm pretty sure that is the case with Intel, but by not having a card to pop the EMI shield off of, I can't say for sure. Or in the case of this Broadcom which has what looks to be a chip (SiGe?) controlling or powering the antennas, which then traces outside the shielding into the Broadcom chip. So while I know that someone like, say DLink, may provide better drivers than Atheros even if they both utilize the same exact chip, by knowing which chip starts off better I at least have a place to start.

 

[Completely Bonkers]

A good place to start might be to look at the router database at http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index. The forum there also has a lot of discussion about various wifi hardware. It might also convince you to use a non-consumer access point.