Cæptain's Log

I’ve done some research on Atheros’ XSpan tech, and surprisingly most of the press releases are only a day or 2 old.

Apparently the 802.11N draft is in version 2.0, which is now professedly extremely stable, but yet still relies greatly on compatible technologies as each company has it’s own style of 11N.

XSpan is actually a chipset technology for their 11N 2.0, and only a few commercial products posses it so far.

The Atheros card I mentioned (AR5008E-3NX) was actually the first N card to be approved for miniPCI-E standards, so I’m pretty solid on picking one up now.
The questions that I’ve now brought up deal with router compatiblity.

Apparently N tech is extremely picky, even to the point of non-functionality between 2 N devices.  You have to have a compatible N variant on both the card and the router.

Luckily I’ve found a handful of routers that are confirmed to be using the XSpan chipset, and the most impressive one I found was the Belkin N1 and it’s smokin’ hot sister, the N1 Vision.

Check out the pictures.
I’m pretty positive I’m spending what little funds I have for this project on this set up:

Atheros AR5008E miniPCI-e card

A UFL to SMA Pigtail cable to connect the 3rd antenna to the card (I own several antennas with ufl connectors on them, from simple little black ones like you would get stock with a pci card, to a badass ‘plate’ dish).  This is where the actual hacking is gonna take place, since I need to dremel a hole in a suitable location on the side of my computers case to mount the connector and route the cable to the card.

Belkin N1 Vision Router – gonna go used and try to score one for less than $100.

I plan on ordering everything today so that it can get shipped out first thing monday.

I’ll post back then.

• Aspire One D150 Hack – Project: Net-War-Book (First Post!!)
• Tutorial: How to add an external antenna to an Acer Aspire One D150 (for 802.11N / XSpan support)
• Belkin N1 #F5D8231-4 Pseudo-Review
• NetWarBook – Materials Bought