B3 Wifi vs B3

[Derpton]

I'm thinking of buying a B3 but I have some questions first.
As of 4/11/2011 the B3 WiFi is priced €399.20 and the normal B3 at €279.20. I have some questions about this €120 wifi hardware:

1) I'm sure it is well supported on linux, but I wonder what kind of chipset is used?

2) If i were to buy a USB wifi adapter that is well supported on linux, would this work on B3? I don't really know if the ARM architecture would be a problem: Can drivers just be compiled to ARM or do they have to be rewritten? I'm looking at this one: Alfa 1000mW 1W 802.11b/g USB Wireless WiFi Network Adapter (AWUS036H)

3) Can someone justify the price of the wifi capability? I know it can handle the new wifi 'n' standard, but am I missing some other features by going down the B3+USB-wifi road?

Thank you in advance and I hope I don't sound too "it's too expensive, blabla...".

[NisseJ]

Hello,

3)

Well i bought my B3 Wifi last week even though i have an Airport Extreme for timemachine etc. It costed more, but my plan is to move my timemachine backups and only use the B3 because it´s so small and beautiful
13 watts of power consumption when running at 100% is worth the difference between the B3 and B3Wifi
I think my Airport Extreme + my harddrive uses more watts than the B3 and the B3 is a whole computer.

[Madnick]

You have misunderstood something here.
The B3 with WiFi is a wireless AP, a device your notebook and other wireless clients can connect to.
That USB adaptor you referred to is a wireless client, which then again can receive the wireless signal from an AP (like the B3 wifi).

But you have a point there.
Remember also that the B3 has only two ethernet ports, one for WAN and one for LAN.
So you propably will at some point need to connect a switch in to your LAN port to provide access for more devices than just one.
So...
Get a wireless router instead. You get a pretty decent one for that 120€ and you have your wireless AP and a 4-port switch all in one.

[Derpton]

You have misunderstood something here.
The B3 with WiFi is a wireless AP, a device your notebook and other wireless clients can connect to.
That USB adaptor you referred to is a wireless client, which then again can receive the wireless signal from an AP (like the B3 wifi).

I did not know that, thank you. From this site:

Now we come to the vexing part: finding a supported adapter. A reliable choice is one that uses the Conexant (Harris/Intersil) Prism chipset. The Prism is well-supported in Linux. Prism 2 & 3 supports 802.11b, or 11 mbps, and the Prism G supports 802.11g, or 54 mbps. The Prism G line supports various combinations of a/b/g. While a lot of wireless adapters work in Linux as a client, working as an access point requires the ability to run in master mode, which is not available in a lot of chipsets.

The USB adaptor is a Realtek chipset and these are not listed on this page as compatible.

(I posted the links for people with the same questions as myself)

[DanielM]

I guess this forum thread might be good if searching for an usb replacement for the built in wifi in B3: http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/wirele ... exist.html

The big reason for why I chose B3 wifi over plain B3 is to have it all packed in a nice box, don't want another piece of hardware in my hallway. Also note that the wireless in B3 is 802.11n 2.4GHz and 5GHz (which is not true for all other wireless n stuff).

/Daniel