NetGear WG511T 802.11g Wireless PC Card

Examination:

Yanking the NetGear WG511T out of its plastic housing and anti-static bag, the card looked rather standard compared against our other notebook WiFi adapters. On one end of the card is the power and activity LEDs while the opposite side interfaces with a CardBus PC Card Type 2 slot. Unlike some other models and brands, the WG511T notebook adapter doesn't utilize an external antenna but is rather built into the actual card.

Displayed on the bottom side of the card is the hardware MAC address and serial number while on the top side is the NetGear tag with model information and the two LEDs for indicating the WiFi card status.

The size, and appearance for that matter, is near identical to the D-Link AirPlus XtremeG DWL-G650 Wireless Cardbus Adapter. The NetGear measures in at 119 x 54 x 6 mm while weighing 46 grams. In the pictures below is a comparison of the D-Link and NetGear cards.

Installation:

As the NetGear WG511T is simply designed for notebooks, the physical installation is quite easy, as you simply have to slide the card into an available CardBus PC Card Type 2 slot. As stated several times across the NetGear documentation and packaging, make sure to install the Microsoft Windows drivers prior to inserting the WiFi card into an available slot. However, with Linux it's really not much of a concern. Many recent Linux distributions, especially LiveCD versions, have begun to bundle the MadWiFi driver. For those unfamiliar with the MadWiFi drivers, they are universal Linux 802.11 a/b/g drivers for WiFi cards utilizing the Atheros Chipset. Luckily, the NetGear WG511T does utilize this networking chip. We continually use MadWiFi drivers on multiple systems and network interfaces, the open source drivers are simply exceptional, and we haven't experienced any major problems in the past. As for the Chipsets from Atheros Communications, they can be found in a majority of the high-end wireless networking devices on the market.