RALINK chipset Wireless NIC's

I see there are quite a few vendors selling cards build with Ralink's chipset. I'm using one myself, the SMCWPCI-GM which uses Ralink's RT61 chip.

Is this the most popular solution? Besides mine, there are Gigabyte, Linksys and a few others that use it. I took a look at the various web sites to get some idea of driver support. Almost all the companies offered old drivers, while Ralink themselves, offer their reference drivers, updated frequently new as of December 2006. I'm using it myself, since it seems to contain the driver, utility and if I'm not mistaken, even updated Firmware thrown into the package somewhere.

In my case, the driver on the CDrom was almost a year old, the driver at SMC site wouldn't install at all. What with the slightly unusual installation procedures, The hit and miss of the wireless signal itself (I'm currently in an apartment. No Line of site,

5 - 8 of my "neighbors" showing up in the ste survey). Im amazed it works at all.

Dave

Reply to
dave xnet
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The Airlink 101 usb wifi I bought uses the chipset. You may be able to find the thread we did on RALINK in this newsgroup. As far as I can tell, most of the sniffer software likes the Prism 2.5 chipset.

Reply to
miso

On Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:00:51 GMT, dave xnet wrote in :

Wi-Fi heavyweights include Atheros, Broadcom, Conexant (Prism), Intel, Marvell, and Realtek. I'm personally partial to Atheros.

Reply to
John Navas

Hello John, is Atheros the chip maker, or is it the OEM card maker? If Atheros is the chip, which manufacturers/cards should I look at?

Dave

Reply to
dave xnet

Thanks for the info. I'll use Google to see if I can find the aforementioned thread - which brands/models use this chipset?

Reply to
dave xnet

On Wed, 07 Mar 2007 04:13:26 GMT, dave xnet wrote in :

Chips and modules.

I personally don't think a PCI adapter is a terribly good idea from an antenna standpoint.

I'd suggest an Ethernet client bridge (Buffalo WLI-TX4-G54HP) instead, or a good router that can run DD-WRT in bridge mode (e.g., Buffalo WHR-HP-G54). Or the MIMO versions.

Reply to
John Navas

Sorry to reply to my own post but I've just seen the Airlink AWLH4030 is one such card. Looks like a bargain ($25 ?)

Dave

Reply to
dave xnet

On Wed, 07 Mar 2007 04:23:04 GMT, dave xnet wrote in :

It's a very good value. I've used it with good results. A small shop in San Francisco sells them for $20, advertising on Craig's List.

Reply to
John Navas

Thanks for this info - I'm new to wireless and just seeing the possibilities. Heard very good things about Buffalo in general. The WLI-TX4-G54HP - I never knew such a device existed.

I am experiencing the antenna problems you speak of. When I get a bit more settled domicile-wise, I'll sort it out. For now, it's acceptable.

When the PC that is now wireless was wired, I used to be able to transfer files from one box to the other (thru the router) at about 70% network utilization, according to the tab on task mamnager. This worked out at about 5 - 6 MBytes P/S. Quite acceptable.

Now that one PC is wireless, Network utilization shows only 20 - 22 %, with a corresponding loss of Bytes P/S.

Dave

Reply to
dave xnet

On Wed, 07 Mar 2007 05:17:53 GMT, dave xnet wrote in :

It's one of my top recommendations for difficult environments -- see .

Reply to
John Navas

On Wed, 07 Mar 2007 05:27:15 GMT, John Navas wrote in :

Newegg.com actually has a cheaper price on the WHR-HP-G54 than on the WLI-TX4-G54HP when shipping is taken into consideration,

While the WLI-TX4-G54HP is plug and play, the WHR-HP-G54 with DD-WRT firmware could be used as a wireless Ethernet client now, or as a very capable wireless router/access point in the future, should you ever want to do that.

Reply to
John Navas

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