hostap, wpa_supplicant and wifi pcmcia cards

[DELORT Stephane]

Hello @ll,

I am about to buy a pcmcia card to carry out tests in our new wifi network. As this network configured to use PEAP/Mschap v2, I need a card able to deal with these protocols.
My investigations lead me to atheros based chipset cards. Shortlisting the cards given in FreeBSD ath driver man-page with the pcmcia criteria, it appears that none of them is currently able to do WPA2 and 802.11x.

However, since they have the atheros chipset, these cards can be used with hostap for RF monitoring and with wpa_supplicant (read from the wpa_supplicant website).

Is it really possible to use WPA2 ant PEAP/mschap v2 with a card which specifications do not mention it ?
(actually, there is either no record of these cards to run under linux/unix systems on their manufacturer's website)

Here is a list of the cards I selected. It would be really interesting if I can have feedback of people knowing/using these cards.

D-link DWL-AG650
D-link DWL-G650B
Linksys WPC55AG
Netgear WAG511  (seems to be very common in europe and maybe be a piece of choice)
Orinoco 8480
3com 3CRPAG175 (support of WPA2 and PEAP can be read on 3com website; it also have an X-jack antenna for improved transmission skills)

Thanks in advance for any advice,
St?phane