Hi -
I can't recommend using a variety of different wireless hardware with different chipsets, drivers, firmware in a network - yet. And I don't know any USB stick that I would recommend. If someone reading this list has a working recommendation still available for purchase, please add a comment.
What we usually do is: Get a router supported by Freifunk/OpenWRT with Broadcom/Atheros SoC inside, reflash it with Freifunk Firmware and connect it to your notebook. Or: If you have Atheros in your notebook or PC with a self compiled recent Madwifi, fine. Otherwise replace the build-in card with something Atheros-based (you may have to modify your notebooks BIOS if you use IBM/Lenovo/HP, in order that the machine accepts the card), or insert a additional cardbus/express card with Atheros chipset, given that you still have a cardbus/express interface in your notebook. The Madwifi driver shipped with your favorite Linux distro may not work properly, so get it from madwifi.org and compile it against the Linux kernel that you are running.
With Atheros you can fix the IBSSID in order to overcome those notorious issues with cell-splitting, I also managed to perform this with IPW3945. Also OpenWRT/Freifunk does allow this with Broadcom hardware, too.
The command on a Linux-PC to fix the IBSSID is:
iwconfig <interface> ap <your preferred cell-id like 02:CA:FF:EE:BA:BE>
Note that this is non-standard behavior, and is unlikely to work with other cards. Actually upon request from Freifunk this was modified in the Madwifi driver.
Old Cisco Aironet 802.11b works for me (mostly) as long as the mesh is the only ad-hoc network around... I use it every day, it is running stable until I stop it. Also ancient Atmel 76c503 based USB sticks work - I used to build mesh routers with them in the old days ;-) Old Prism2, 2.5, 3 and Prism54 (Hard-Mac only) work, but are susceptible to cell-splitting (and may lock up if cell-splitting is already going on in your WiFi cell).
I have a Intel IPW3945 in a new notebook that works somehow with a little trick under Ubuntu (fix the Cell-ID in managed mode first, switch to ad-hoc, set essid, set channel, enable interface) - but from time to time I get hiccups that seem to be associated with firmware errors (reported in syslog) - then I need to reset the interface). The experience with IPW2200 was even worse with a notebook I used a year ago, but I didn't try that recently.
Broadcom would be an option, but the company doesn't provide drivers for Linux-PCs. There is an open-source driver but I don't know whether it actually works in ad-hoc mode now.
cu elektra
thanks, elektra, would it be possible, that an usb stick with wifi chip and coded in software can be distributed? e.g. by foebud? we need a solution, where people use their laptop and not need to configure their routers. The Laptop or USB-Stick has the wifi chip... is there a wiki, where all wifi chips are listed and how the bug fixing for them is going on by whoom?
Maxx
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