Cisco-Linksys WPC11 Wireless-B Notebook Adapter

by Cisco

Product Details

Product Manual [1.99mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.8 inches ; 1.6 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000056SSM
• Item model number: WPC11
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (416 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #74 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Networking Products > Network Adapters > Laptop Network Adapters
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 15, 2001

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description Whether you're at your desk or in the boardroom, the Linksys InstantWireless Network PC card allows you to share printers, files, and more anywhere within your wireless LAN infrastructure, increasing your productivity and keeping you in touch.

The Instant Wireless card gives you the freedom to work your way, from where you want--letting you take full advantage of your notebook PC's portability while providing you with access to all your network resources. A high-powered built-in diversity antenna means that you're covered--at a distance of up to 150 meters (492 feet) inside and 500 meters (1,640 feet) outside. And because it occupies only one Type II PCMCIA slot, you're free to use your other slots for additional accessories.

See a comparison diagram of the different wireless technologies.

Wireless networks are rapidly becoming more popular and coming down in price. Because they don't require cables, you can use the devices anywhere in an office or home, even out on the patio. There's no need to roll out an Ethernet network cable to each room of a house; you can network anywhere--without wires. Outside the home, wireless networking is available in hotspots at coffee shops, businesses, and airports--great when you're on the road and need to get some work done. For convenience, wireless networking is the answer. Which Wireless Standard Is Right for Me? Now that you've decided to create a wireless network, the next step is to figure out which wireless standard to use. Basically, a standard is a set of specifications for a device. All devices that follow a specific standard share operating characteristics, such as the radio frequency used and maximum data transfer speed. For wireless networking, there are three standards to choose from at this time: 802.11b 802.11a 802.11g To learn about the differences between the standards and select the right one for your network, click here for an easy-to-understand chart.

Product Description

A IEEE 802.11b wireless Type II PCMCIA-type network card giving you wireless Ethernet access up to 1,640 feet away / For Windows Rugged metal design with integrated antenna Advanced power management features Compatible with Windows 95, 98, Millennium, NT, & 2000 To use with your desktop PC, add the Linksys WDT11 Instant Wireless PC Adapter

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

298 of 320 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good wireless card, once you are past its setup, September 26, 2001

By 

W. Lewis (St Louis, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cisco-Linksys WPC11 Wireless-B Notebook Adapter (Personal Computers)

I telecommute full-time from home and decided to get wireless network gear to allow me to work from anywhere in my house. Based on my previous good experiences with their other products, I decided on a Linksys setup. Setting up the Linksys wireless router was a snap, but unfortunately this "matching" PCMCIA card was not nearly as easy to get working.

Windows ME:

My first few installation attempts were on WinME. The driver installer, on the provided Linksys CD, had problems locating the necessary files it needed to install. The CD was either missing files or the installer was looking in the incorrect folders. Either way, pretty sloppy. Downloading the latest drivers from linksys.com fixed the installation problems. However, I was unable to get the card to make the wireless link with the access point.

Windows 2000:

Frustrated, I switched to the OS I should have installed it on in the first place, Win2k, where the drivers installed with no problems. However, again the card was unable to link with the router.

User Manual:

The manual supplied with the card, at first glance, looks promising. Flipping through, you see quite a few screenshots of their configuration utility (supplied on the CD) and a lot of text. However, I was disappointed and confused once I dug in. The text did little more than label the different configuration utility views and properties in each screenshot, providing little or no explanation for what the setting does and why. I could not even locate an explanation for what the LED's on the PCMCIA card indicated.

The most frustrating aspect of the user manual was the section I needed the most: troubleshooting. The troubleshooting section was a whopping two pages (not front and back) and consisted of three questions.

Linksys Technical Support:

Linksys has 7-day tech support, so I was able to contact them on a Sunday, which was nice. The quality of their technicians is what you would expect - good and bad. I first spoke with a guy for 30 minutes who was little help and, as I later found out, actually gave me some incorrect information. I called back later and managed to get a hold of one helpful technician that took literally 2 minutes to determine the problem and step me through fixing it. I also asked a few basic questions that the manual couldn't answer and the technician acknowledged that the user manual was "embarrassing" and "missing critical setup information".

Summary:

The card works great! While the router sits in my basement, I tote my laptop around the house and am able to work in the living room, back patio, on the 2nd story, etc, and the download/upload speeds are as fast as my desktop, which is cabled directly to the router. Despite the problems I had, I would still recommend the card. If you have trouble configuring it, I would seriously advise skipping the manual and just calling Linksys tech support.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good bang for the buck., March 17, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Cisco-Linksys WPC11 Wireless-B Notebook Adapter (Personal Computers)

I bought these cards coz a colleague of mine recommended them and I heard good things about them at practicallynetworked.com.
I have a Windows Me machine connected to a DSL line and a wpc11 card with a wdt11 pci adapter for local access.
My other machine is an IBM Thinkpad T20 with Win2K server running on it and a wpc11 card for wireless access.
I use both cards in the adhoc mode since I live in a small apartment and don't want to spend another 240 bucks
on an access point.

Installation was never a problem, although you may want to reboot your machine after setting up all the details like
channel, SSID, etc, even if your machine doesn't ask you to. I'd recommend using the device manager to configure the card,
never use the configuration utility that comes with the card
(floppy disk #2). It sucks!
I have been able to get about 5.0 MBps between my machines consistently (pretty consistent with practicallynetworked.com's
reviews). The only other product in the market with better bandwidth is Cisco's Aironet, which supposedly gives you 6+ MBps
but costs almost twice as much. And
since my high-speed internet connection is not going to be 5 MBps in the near future, I can use these cards for a while.
Technical support sucks bigtime, tho...as other reviewers have mentioned. One of my cards stopped working and I had to wait for
40 mins to get a hold of a live person...he sent me an RMA form my email pretty promptly and asked me to return the card. They replaced it.
He even told me the best way to get in touch with tech support quickly was call them up after 10:00 pm
PST. The load is low that time of the day, he said.
Some tips while setting up your wireless home network.
- two cards work pretty well in the ad-hoc mode. Don't buy the access point unless you really need to.
- If you use Windows Se or Me as the main computer connected to the internet, you have no choice but to use ICS, which works like a charm.
With this config, use ZoneAlarm as the firewall if you need one. If you're main machine has Win2k Server, you can use either ICS or NAT.
If you use NAT, ZoneAlarm will block outgoing access from other local machines on the wireless network. So either buy ZoneAlarm Pro
or use Tiny Software's Personal firewall which works with NAT, but not with ICS (this is the most configurable and user-friendly firewall I've seen so far
that you don't have to pay for).
- Use Qcheck (available at www.qcheck.net) to measure throughput between machines so you can check out the range and other parameters.
- One advantage of using ICS and ZoneAlarm is that you can run a VPN client to your office network from any of the local machines while the main machine
can surf the web without knowing about the VPN tunnel. I haven't been able to do that with NAT and Tiny firewall.

- Buy the wdt11 if you need to install the cards in a desktop. Don't get any other generic pcmcia adapters. I got one for a good price and
then realized that it was a ISA-Pcmcia adapter and the max throughput it supported was 5 MBps. Of course, I can't go higher than 5 MBps
anyway but why not get a tested card from the same company for a couple of bucks more?

So, overall the cards are good, it's a good deal but the tech support is almost non-existent.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Do your laptop a favor and look elsewhere, November 10, 2002

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cisco-Linksys WPC11 Wireless-B Notebook Adapter (Personal Computers)

Those of you who have read my reviews have probably noticed that I don't write too many negative opinions. In general, I am a careful shopper. I like to research, read reviews, and just do my homework before making a purchase. Occasionally, however, I do make spontaneous buys. Unfortunately, I generally find myself getting burned on these occasions. Alas, my purchase of the Linksys WPC11 Instant Wireless Network PC Card was no exception.

A wireless LAN excursion

I bought my WPC11 along with the Linksys BEFW11S4. The WPC11 is a PCMCIA card for your laptop that enables wireless local area networking. The BEFW11S4 is a wireless access point, DSL router, and 4-port switch combo. Both devices use the increasing popular 802.11b wireless networking standard. Wireless networking in general is a fast moving field with a number of competing standards and a whole new set of technical terms. However, in the interests of brevity, I will save a discussion of the ins and outs of wireless networking for my forthcoming review of the BEFW11S4.

We're all the same on the inside...

The guts of the WPC11 were designed by Intersil Corporation and use their second-generation PRISM chip set. The PRISM II is pretty much the industry standard and is used in products by Linksys, D-Link, SMC, Cisco, and others. There is actually not much fault I can find with the PRISM II. Rather, there is one major implementation flaw in the WPC11 that severely handicaps it in comparison with its competition.

Let's talk about the not so bad first

First, let me cover the good features of the WPC11. Overall, the build quality of the card is sound. The card itself is sturdy and solid and gives off an impression of durability. When inserted into a PC Card slot on a laptop, there is about a one-inch long portion of the card that remains exposed. There are two indication lights on portion. One is amber and indicates signal quality. A solid light means a solid signal. A flashing light means a lost signal. The other light is green and flashes during network activity. Having two separate indicators is a nice convenience. I find a single indicator light to be of marginal use.

The WPC11 comes with drivers for all flavors of Windows. Installation is simple and painless. You run the setup executable, wait for it to complete, restart your computer, and voila, you are good to go. Actually, you are almost good to go. You also need to install the configuration software. The config software is well done, in my opinion. The software runs in the background and can be accessed via a task tray icon. The icon changes depending on signal strength, so a quick glance into the lower corner of your screen can tell you if you're connected or not. Clicking on the icon opens a window that allows you to quickly configure the WPC11. You can set up your network properties and encryption. The WPC11 allows for both 40-bit and 128-bit WEP encryption. The menus read 64-bit, but its actually 40-bit encryption; its just a difference in convention. The configuration utility also has measures real-time link quality and signal strength, making it easy to test the range of your wireless network.

And now comes the ugly...

This is where the WPC11 really falters. The range of the WPC11 is very very poor. It is by far the worst of any wireless LAN card that I have had experience with. Other reviews have mentioned a poor antenna design and I am inclined to believe this is true. As I stated earlier, a number of manufacturers use Intersil's PRISM chip set. The only real variation from manufacturer to manufacturer is in the build quality and the antenna. And apparently, Linksys chose to use a very poor antenna design that severely cripples the range of the card. A friend of mine has a laptop with a built-in wireless LAN card based off of a first-generation chip set that has easily twice the range of my WPC11.

Be a smart shopper

The glaring lack of range is the only real fault I find with the WPC11, but it is a very severe handicap. A quick scan of the prices of various wireless networking cards shows all the major brands to be within $10 of each other. So buying the WPC11 was basically me purchasing a lesser product for the same price as a better product. If you're looking to set up a wireless network, look past the Linksys WPC11. Though I haven't tried it myself, I've heard particularly good things about Lucent Technologies' WaveLAN PC Card. Regardless, there are at least a half dozen alternatives to the WPC11, a sad reminder to myself to do my homework and stay away from impulse purchases.