Netgear WG311 shielding

I recently picked up the Netgear WG311 V3 very cheap from Office Depot.

The card seems to work fine with ndiswrapper; there are other guides on getting it working.

The first problem was the reception was, in a word, rubbish. After putting the box back in it's usual home the house wireless was lucky to get a 7/100 signal rating. I found a work-around while the cheap external antenna I ordered is arriving; shield the antenna with foil. This increased signal to between 30-40/100, a considerable boost making it actually useful.

The second problem was coming to terms with wpa_supplicant, of which the details often become very confusing very quickly. Here's the Debian 2-second guide for a simple, standard WPA network I was looking for:

1. Add to /etc/network/interfaces

   iface wlan0 inet dhcp
   # Useful with ifup -v
   #    wpa-debug-level 3
        wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
   

2. /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf should look like:

   network={
           ssid="your_ssid"
           psk="your_password"
           key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
           proto=WPA
   }