# Question: Any good USB dongle that can work as an AP?

## wormite

I have recently got hand on a D-link DWA140 usb wireless dongle, its chipset is Ralink RT2870, I have confirmed its working with the official driver.

http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=2

but I still can not enable it with the master mode.

I am seeking for another USB dongle for the capability of kernel support with master mode enabled so that I can use it as an additional wireless link between my two boxes.

Such a link would easily allow remote desktop for tablet PC or pad such as ipad or Notionink's adam pad. The idea is having a touch screen to fully take advantage of my linux box, such as using matlab, and at the same time keep up the refresh rate of the remote desktop with a dedicated wireless network.

I think the era of wireless touch screen, to fully separate the human computer interface and computation itself should not be very far away, which means sitting a box on your desk will enable you to wander around with a thin, touch screen to read books or to do heavy duty work on your bed.

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## wormite

Well, I found the best answer to my question myself,

if we are not considering all the staging drivers for the kernel itself, just look at this page.

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers

Search for USB and look at the AP capability.

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## wormite

Currently the most promising AP with N capability seems to be the carl9170

The most stable one seems to be p54usb

for the USB dongles.

Has anyone figured out the minimal installation for VNC remote desktop viewer?

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## gerdesj

 *wormite wrote:*   

> Currently the most promising AP with N capability seems to be the carl9170
> 
> The most stable one seems to be p54usb
> 
> for the USB dongles.
> ...

 

I am not sure I understand your question.  What do you mean by minimal installation for the VNC viewer? 

Incidentally, if you are running this over a fast wireless link then are you aware that X Windows is fully network transparent:

Enable X11 forwarding in /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the server by adding something like this:

AllowAgentForwarding yes

AllowTcpForwarding yes

X11Forwarding yes

X11DisplayOffset 10

X11UseLocalhost yes

And then on the client in /etc/ssh/ssh_config, set these:

Host *

  ForwardAgent yes

  ForwardX11 yes

Then ssh from the client to the server.  Type:

echo $DISPLAY

and you should get something like localhost:10.0 as an answer.

Then run an X Windows program and it will pop up on your client.  Or it would if you allow it!  Type xhost + into a console and that will allow remote connections on the client.

I am assuming that your client is running some form of Unix ...

Otherwise its VNC time .... or NX which is pretty good

Cheers

Jon

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## wormite

Thanks gerdesj, that was a very good tip, I will try it out and report back.

What I meant by "minimal" is trying to remotely access the server's remote desktop with the minimal resources required on the client both in the sense of

memory and cpu time. That means cutting down all the redundant work load, such as X server itself.

I believe what you provided is a solution to this. I have tried the xtightvncviewer on a machine with LXDE (Lubuntu), which convinced me 

that we still need some compression of the information transmitted for display. I used a cross ethernet cable which should be capable of 

exchanging information between the client and sever at

a speed of 10MBps, the result still shows a great deal of slow refreshing. (0.5s for an operation to really take effect on the client)

I do not think that the wireless can surpass the speed of ethernet cable, which is still much slower than a VGA or DVI cable. But I am still 

exploring the possibility of having a portable, thin, light, display screen with touch screen capability which communicates with the the server

at low latency(high refreshing rate for the display). I was hoping that the new trend of android tablets will give an answer to this.

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## cwr

You might want to look at the Asus WL 330gE - it's not a USB dongle, but it's almost as

compact, and will do pretty much whatever you want as far as wiireless is concerned.

Will

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