Europe vs. USA - need help

Originally, the message came from out IT department:

If I am to buy a loptop in US, is there any way I can avoid the problem?

 

Well, read what they said. You just won't be able to connect to networks that use channels above 11.
If you want to avoid the problem, don't try to connect to those networks. Or tell whoever is managing them to use a different channel.

 

The model of the wireless adaptor usually has some letters after its number. I thought that the folk west of the pond use "a" while those to the east use "b". I was under the impression that if a European notebook's wireless adaptor included "a" then it would work in North America. Something like the 4965abgn should work anywhere.

John

 

The letters signify what types of wireless standards the card takes (Wireless A, B, G, N) not the channels that the signal is broadcast on.

 

It will be very difficult to change those channels as they pertain to the transceivers in both sides, server and client. It would be to expensive to have a broad transceiver when you will use it 99% of the time in one market.

The only way to get other channels would be to use en external upconverter/dowconverter black box, I'm wondering if they exist. I don't think you can re-program the wireless adapters, you might be able to do some tweaking but the transceivers have other parts like filters, amplifiers, etc, and these components are frequency band standard dependant.

I'm not surprised to see that Europe is using different frequencies, they have been doing this forever in the carriers spectrum (e.g. GSM).

 

Wouldn't a simple solution just be to buy a European USB/Expresscard Wifi adapter and use that when traveling?

 

That sounds good to me, but I think he wants to use an internal card, and even there Intel must have an 4965 AGN for Europe, it sounds logical to me to have one.

 

Absolutely. I live in Europe and rarely travel to US, so an internal wifi card is needed. Anyway, can I communicate to a notebook manufacturer and ask for one to be installed on my laptop?!

 

Unless you buy from a boutique reseller, you're not going to be able to make customizations of that manner with the big companies.

 

Are you saying that no laptop in Europe comes with an internal WiFi card?

Yes, thy OEM will put in for you but it won't works as you are explaining.

Tell us more about the European channel allocations for WiFi.

 

Wirelessman

Be attentive. This was a response to the previous post

 

The easiest solution, short of having the seller from whom you purchase install a European-compliant internal card seems to be to be that you purchase a European-compliant internal card yourself and replace the non-compliant card.

 

But it would seem that we don't have WiFi internal cards in europe, that is what I'm getting from his post.

 

Which seems to be an odd position, given that, e.g., the Broadcomm internal card, p/n BCM4322/4323 can be set to work with 11 operating channels for the US, 13 operating channels for Europe, and 14 operating channels for Japan. The product brief also doesn't list separate units for each market, which suggests to me (keep in mind, I can be a gullible fool at times ) that the number of operating channels the card uses is a software/firmware function, not a hardware function.

The same goes with their new draft-N series, called the intensi-fi family of internal cards.

According to Intel on this webpage, an Intel wireless card can cross so-called "regulatory domains" (i.e., go from the US to Europe), and the way that the card handles the change is that, by default, all cards (worldwide, it appears), only actively scan channels 1-11, but can passively receive on channels 12-14. So, in the case of the OP, if he purchases a notebook with an Intel wireless card inside (at least one of those specified on the Intel webpage linked above), if his firm is using an access point that broadcasts on channels 12 or 13, his notebook should still be able to receive that broadcast and, once its picked up the signal, interact on those channels, even though it's only actively scanning channels 1-11. At least that's my take on it.

 

It makes a lot of sense what you are saying, so I don't understand why the IT department warned Grishka about the lack of appropriate internal WiFi card in Europe, it made it sound like they don't have the applicable option for their market, strange!

 

Actually, and unfortunately, it doesn't surprise me in the least - I wouldn't be at all surprised if a lot of vendors selling into the U.S. market only take enough time to write a driver that can handle active scanning for 11 channels, and only spent the extra time/money to add support for channels 12-14 for the firmware to be sold on those systems going into Europe/Japan, for which, I'm sure, they charge a correspondingly higher price (not to mention, they manage to keep their markets separate so that, e.g., a large European company isn't tempted to buy all of their systems in the U.S., and bring what they need in Europe over on the next ship).

 

There is another fellow in the forum called REPARAQU, he is from Holland, I'll ask him what is the true story, I'm very sure that, that IT department sucks

 

Which I suppose would make it a case of the greedy mis-leading the blind?

 

Yeah, hahahahaha.

 

It's merely a small region change in the driver settings. You'll be ok buying hardware from here and using it in Europe and vice versa.

 

Hi Grishka, check this;

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=246074

 

too much commotion, laptops that i own(ed) last 4 years are able to be used to access internet hotspots, hotels, coffee shops, and even companies wifi configuration with almost zero to zero efforts (unless of course the providers have such a dinosaur router configuration, rare nowadays). This is being true with any directions u want to go - european comps on us soils, et vice versa

cheers ...