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

Huawei B68L-25 - board - Ralink RT63365E-40135

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 Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

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 medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer com ...

(

Wireless LAN A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building ...

) 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, California, San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The ...

, then moved its headquarters to

Hsinchu Hsinchu (, ), officially Hsinchu City, is a city located in northwestern Taiwan. It is the most populous city in Taiwan that is not a special municipality, with estimated 450,655 inhabitants. Hsinchu is a coastal city bordering the Taiwan ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

. On 5 May 2011, Ralink was acquired by

MediaTek MediaTek Inc. (), sometimes informally abbreviated as MTK, is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company that designs and manufactures a range of semiconductor products, providing chips for wireless communications, high-definition television, h ...

. 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. It is based in Austin, Texas. History Early IEEE 802.11, 802.11 product ...

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

Wi-Fi Protected Setup Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), referred to as Wi-Fi Simple Configuration in the specification, and branded as WPS, is a standard designed to ease the setup of Wi-Fi networks in home and small office environments. Created by Wi-Fi Alliance, the p ...

(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 p ...

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

and the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The 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 medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer c ...

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

Gigabyte Technology GIGA-BYTE Technology Co., Ltd. (commonly referred to as Gigabyte Technology or simply Gigabyte) is a Taiwanese manufacturer and distributor of computer hardware. Gigabyte's principal business is motherboards, It shipped 4.8 million motherboards i ...

Linksys Linksys Holdings, Inc., 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 Tsao, Victor and Janie Tsao, both Taiwanese immigrants to the United St ...

D-Link D-Link Systems, Inc. (formerly Datex Systems, Inc.) is a Taiwanese multinational manufacturer of networking hardware and telecoms equipments. It was founded in 1986 and headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. History Datex Systems was founded i ...

Asus ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (, , , ; stylized as ASUSTeK or ASUS) is a Taiwanese Multinational corporation, multinational computer, phone hardware and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan. Its products include deskto ...

and

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

, as well as Wi-Fi adaptors for

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

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 * Prov ...

ExpressCard ExpressCard, initially called NEWCARD, is an interface to connect peripheral, peripheral devices to a computer, usually a laptop, laptop computer. The ExpressCard technical standard specifies the design of slots built into the computer and of expa ...

PC Card PC Card is a technical standard specifying an expansion card interface for laptops and personal digital assistants, PDAs. The PCMCIA originally introduced the 16-bit Industry Standard Architecture, ISA-based PCMCIA Card in 1990, but renamed it to ...

, and

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a high-speed standard used to connect hardware components inside computers. It is designed to replace older expansion bus standards such as Peripher ...

interfaces. An example of an adapter is the

Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector The Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector is a wireless game adapter, developed by Nintendo and Buffalo Technology, which allows the Nintendo DS, Wii and 3DS users without a Wi-Fi connection or compatible Wi-Fi network to establish an Internet connect ...

which uses the Ralink RT2570 chipset to allow a

Nintendo DS The is a foldable 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 worki ...

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 regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

to be internetworked via a home computer.

Operating systems support

Ralink provides some documentation without a

non-disclosure agreement A non-disclosure agreement (NDA), also known as a confidentiality agreement (CA), confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), proprietary information agreement (PIA), or secrecy agreement (SA), is a legal contract or part of a contract between at le ...

. 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 (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or Electronics, electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with computer memory, ...

used in

Wireless routers A wireless router or Wi-Fi 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 ma ...

Linux

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

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

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 Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification ...

.) Ralink provides

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

-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.

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
*
ralural

manual page A man page (short for manual page) is a form of software documentation found on Unix and Unix-like operating systems. Topics covered include programs, system libraries, system calls, and sometimes local system details. The local host administra ...

s for

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

{{Electronics industry in Taiwan MediaTek Companies established in 2001 Networking hardware companies Electronics companies of Taiwan Computer companies of Taiwan Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct computer companies of the United States Wireless networking

Operating systems support

Linux

See also

References

External links