Ralink

Ralink Technology, Corp.
Subsidiary
Industry Semiconductor
Founded January 2001
Headquarters Hsin-chu, Taiwan; Cupertino, CA
Products Wi-Fi chipset
Parent MediaTek

Ralink Technology, Corp. was a Wi-Fi chipset manufacturer mainly known for their IEEE 802.11 (Wireless LAN)) chipsets. Originally founded in 2001 in Cupertino, California, Ralink moved its headquarters to Hsinchu, Taiwan. On May 5, 2011 Ralink was bought by the Taiwanese company MediaTek.[1]

Some of Ralink's 802.11n RT2800 chipsets have been accepted into the Wi-Fi Alliance 802.11n draft 2.0 core technology testbed. They have also been previously selected in the Wi-Fi Protected Set Up (WPS) and Wireless Multimedia Extensions Power Save (WMM-PS) testbeds. Ralink was a participant in the Wi-Fi Alliance and the IEEE 802.11 standards committees.[2]

Ralink chipsets are used in various consumer-grade routers made by Gigabyte Technology, Linksys, D-Link, Asus and Belkin, as well as Wi-Fi adaptors for USB, PCI, ExpressCard, PC Cards and PCI Express interfaces. An example of an adapter is the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector which uses the Ralink's RT2570 chipset to allow Nintendo DSs and Wiis to connect to the Internet via a home computer.

Operating systems support

Ralink provides some documentation without a non-disclosure agreement.[3] This includes datasheets of their PCI and PCIe chipsets, but for now does not include documentation of their system on a chip used in Wireless routers.

Linux

As can be seen in the article Comparison of open-source wireless drivers, drivers for MediaTek Ralink wireless network interface controllers were mainlined into the Linux kernel version 2.6.24. Ralink provides GNU General Public License-licensed (GPL) drivers for the Linux kernel. While Linux drivers for the older RT2500 chipsets are no longer updated by Ralink, these are now being maintained by Serialmonkey's rt2x00 project.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 the firmwares, but does not allow their modification.

In February 2011 Greg Kroah-Hartman praised Ralink for their change in attitude towards the Linux kernel developer community:

“ As you can see in these posts, Ralink is sending patches for the upstream rt2x00 driver for their new chipsets, and not just dumping a huge, stand-alone tarball driver on the community, as they have done in the past. This shows a huge willingness to learn how to deal with the kernel community, and they should be strongly encouraged and praised for this major change in attitude. ”

—Greg Kroah-Hartman on 2011-02-09, here

References

  1. ↑ Ralink and MediaTek Consented to Change the Planned Merger Method
  2. ↑ Wi-Fi Alliance Announces First Wi-Fi Certified 802.11n Draft Products
  3. ↑ Blob-Busters Interviewed

External links