does anyone know how to bridge 2 wireless cards so they work as one? if i leave just one card in the pc it will freak out after a little while and if i'm streaming video off another pc it gets kinda annoying. i had a 2nd wireless card lying around (exactly same model) so i've put it in but not sure how to link them

thanks

Afaik you can't bridge wireless cards but I may be wrong.

This idea sounds silly, I know you can bridge (or team) wired nics, because the switch manages things, but wirelessly? The only way I know how to team network cards (so they share the same IP, and provide fallover redundancy) is by having a intel management nic in the computer with its intel proset drivers.

hi fork^ - long time no hear.


if w/card #1 freaks out after awhile isn't that just a sign of wear?


I'm just trying to get a better analysis of your situation - it doesn't quite fit that your need for bridging is placed at the root of your issue.

hey koopz.

yeah thats what i thought as well so we're just running the other w/card by itself now and seeing how it goes. havent really played on it that much today but we'll see how it goes. my flatmate suggested it as his pc upstairs running on a 108mbps w/card is fine (the wireless router is downstairs) and these 2 cards are only 54mbps and signal strength varies depending on who's walking around the place - problematic pc is plugged into the tv so lots of lounge room traffic. we figured if we could somehow bridge them then we'd get a more reliable connection?

not too sure myself i haven't dabbled with wireless before and i'm a bit hungover today so my head isn't working too well :/

can you bridge multiple wireless cards to work as one? not a big problem anyways as we've put the hdd with all the movies on it in that pc now, but still would be nice.

Since wireless networks are a half duplex medium and not a switched environment (only 1 device can talk at a time) bridging the device to balance the load will most likely be unsucessful.

The cards close proximity to each other will probally cause more problems then it will solve also.

As for the reliable connection, does your wireless router have two antennas? If so, the two antennas on the router are there precisely for this reason. If the signal is blocked between your PC and one antenna on the router, then it falls over to the other antenna. It is called diversity. The distance that these two antennas are appart is specially designed so that it is as hard a possible to block both antennas simultaneously. Also, you only need diversity on one end of the connection, so putting (poorly laid out, ad hoc) diversity on the other end probably wont help much.

If the problem is in the card itself, different story.

As for the reliable connection, does your wireless router have two antennas? If so, the two antennas on the router are there precisely for this reason. If the signal is blocked between your PC and one antenna on the router, then it falls over to the other antenna.

on mine I think one antenna is Rx and one is Tx, it lets you set them to auto or manual rx/tx left/right assignment.