if you can find a Broadcom based 802.11n adapter it should work with the native Airport driver.
I don't personally know of any Broadcom based Express Cards out there, but the Atheros chipset cards work with the native drivers as well. From my last research (admittedly several months ago) the best bet for a low-cost card was the D-Link DWA-643 ( http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=550), which used the same Atheros chipset as the Atheros based Belkin N cards that were only available for a short time. Belkin fairly quickly switched to the RALink chipset cards (which work with the right drivers, but not with the native Airport drivers, or with 802.1x) without changing the packaging or product name to really differentiate, so getting one of the Belkin cards tends to be a crapshoot. Every time the vendor wants to change the chipset, they have to get it tested and approved by the FCC, thus you can quickly figure out how many revisions a card has gone through, and thanks to the handy linked PDF files, you can ID the chipset on the card. Of course, this will stop being of use to many of us with the removal of the ExpressCard slot on the new MBP 15. The ideal solution would be for all agencies to agree that having a wireless card installed is no more a security risk than having an ethernet card installed (or a USB port which can have either adapter plugged in for that matter). All can be used to transfer data insecurely /if not secured or if used improperly/. Perhaps an Apple supported MCX or EFI control to securely disable wireless (and camera, and bluetooth and microphone) would help. I highly recommend that everyone who would like to see such a control file a bug report to formally request Apple make it available. This message was drilled into the heads of every WWDC attendee by every engineer asked to support a new feature. If we can show a feature is important to enough people, Apple might actually devote some time to making it happen. In its push to make the iPhone enterprise friendly, Apple is already heading down a path to make parts of OS X easier to lock down. The iPhone already supports disabling the camera and configuration of wifi through its provisioning profile (another tool I'd love to see on the Mac! Hello RADAR. ), so why not enable these controls on the Mac as well?
--DH |