Ralink Technology, Corp. is a

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

chipset manufacturer mainly known for their

IEEE 802.11 IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer commun ...

(

Wireless LAN A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and bus ...

) chipsets. Ralink was founded in 2001 in

Cupertino, California Cupertino ( ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 57,8 ...

, then moved its headquarters to

Hsinchu Hsinchu (, Chinese: 新竹, Pinyin: ''Xīnzhú'', Wade–Giles: ''Hsin¹-chu²'') is a city located in northwestern Taiwan. It is the most populous city in Taiwan Province not among the special municipalities, with estimated 450,655 inhabi ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. On 5 May 2011, Ralink was acquired by

MediaTek MediaTek Inc. () is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company that provides chips for wireless communications, high-definition television, handheld mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers, navigation systems, consumer multimedia pr ...

. Some of Ralink's 802.11n RT2800 chipsets have been accepted into the

Wi-Fi Alliance The Wi-Fi Alliance is a non-profit organization that owns the Wi-Fi trademark. Manufacturers may use the trademark to brand products certified for Wi-Fi interoperability. History Early 802.11 products suffered from interoperability problems be ...

802.11n draft 2.0 core technology testbed. They have also been selected in the

Wi-Fi Protected Setup Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS; originally, Wi-Fi Simple Config) is a network security standard to create a secure wireless home network. Created by Cisco and introduced in 2006, the point of the protocol is to allow home users who know little of w ...

(WPS) and

Wireless Multimedia Extensions Wireless Multimedia Extensions (WME), also known as Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM), is a Wi-Fi Alliance interoperability certification, based on the IEEE 802.11e standard. It provides basic Quality of service (QoS) features to IEEE 802.11 networks. WMM ...

Power Save (WMM-PS) testbeds. Ralink was a participant in the

and the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

802.11 IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer commu ...

standards committees. Ralink RT2560F on Gemtek WiFi Mini PCI Card WMIR-103G-7784

Ralink chipsets are used in various consumer-grade routers made by

Gigabyte Technology Gigabyte Technology (branded as GIGABYTE or sometimes GIGA-BYTE; formally GIGA-BYTE Technology Co., Ltd.) is a Taiwanese manufacturer and distributor of computer hardware. Gigabyte's principal business is motherboards. It shipped 4.8 million moth ...

Linksys Linksys is an American brand of data networking hardware products mainly sold to home users and small businesses. It was founded in 1988 by the couple Victor and Janie Tsao, both Taiwanese immigrants to the United States. Linksys products incl ...

D-Link D-Link Corporation is a Taiwanese multinational networking equipment manufacturing corporation headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. It was founded in March 1986 in Taipei as ''Datex Systems Inc.'' History D-Link Corporation changed its name fr ...

, Asus and

Belkin Belkin is an American consumer electronics and networking company headquartered in El Segundo, California. It produces mobile and computer connectivity devices and peripherals for consumer and commercial use. These include wireless chargers, pow ...

, as well as Wi-Fi adaptors for

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...

PCI PCI may refer to: Business and economics * Payment card industry, businesses associated with debit, credit, and other payment cards ** Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for credit card processors * Pro ...

, ExpressCard,

PC Card In computing, PC Card is a configuration for computer parallel communication peripheral interface, designed for laptop computers. Originally introduced as PCMCIA, the PC Card standard as well as its successors like CardBus were defined and devel ...

, and

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common ...

interfaces. An example of an adapter is the

Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector The Nintendo Wi-Fi, Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector is a wireless game adapter, developed by Nintendo, Nintendo and Melco, Buffalo Technology, which allows the Nintendo DS, Nintendo DS, Wii and Nintendo 3DS, 3DS users without a Wi-Fi connection or ...

which uses the Ralink RT2570 chipset to allow a

Nintendo DS The is a handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens working in tan ...

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other Regional lockout, regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major ho ...

to be internetworked via a home computer.

Operating systems support

Ralink provides some documentation without a

non-disclosure agreement A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a legal contract or part of a contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish ...

. This includes datasheets of their PCI and PCIe chipsets, but for now does not include documentation of their

system on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...

used in

Wireless routers A wireless router is a device that performs the functions of a router and also includes the functions of a wireless access point. It is used to provide access to the Internet or a private computer network. Depending on the manufacturer and mod ...

Linux

Drivers for MediaTek Ralink wireless network interface controllers were mainlined into the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

version 2.6.24. (See

Comparison of open-source wireless drivers Wireless network cards for computers require control software to make them function ( firmware, device drivers). This is a list of the status of some open-source drivers for 802.11 IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area ne ...

.) Ralink provides

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

-licensed (GPL) drivers for the

. While Linux drivers for the older RT2500 chipsets are no longer updated by Ralink, these are now being maintained by Serialmonkey's rt2x00 project. Current Ralink chipsets require a firmware to be loaded. Ralink allows the use and redistribution of firmware, but does not allow its modification. In February 2011

Greg Kroah-Hartman Greg Kroah-Hartman (GKH) is a major Linux kernel developer. he is the Linux kernel maintainer for the branch, the staging subsystem, USB, driver core, debugfs, kref, kobject, and the sysfs kernel subsystems, Userspace I/O (with Hans J. Koch ...

praised Ralink for their change in attitude towards the

developer community:

References

External links

* MediaTek / RaLink RT3070 Driver Win, OSX, Linux https://www.mediatek.com/products/broadbandWifi/rt3070
List of Wi-Fi products using Ralink chipsets

rt2x00 project
Linux drivers.
ralural

manual page A man page (short for manual page) is a form of software documentation usually found on a Unix or Unix-like operating system. Topics covered include computer programs (including library and system calls), formal standards and conventions, and ev ...

s for

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. According to the website, the OpenBSD project em ...

{{Electronics industry in Taiwan MediaTek Companies established in 2001 Networking hardware companies Electronics companies of Taiwan

Operating systems support

Linux

See also

References

External links