Third Pary Wifi adapters (plus a bedtime story from Dane)

[dcv]

Long story short - on the off chance any of you ever get a client using a third party USB wifi adapter on their Mac, there is an AMAZING chance it has a Ralink chipset, and you need the updated drivers from here:

http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Macintosh.html

To get it to work with WPA or WPA2.




Long story long:
Last week, the Airport Extreme card in my iBook decided to hate me. Now, leaving it on for any period of time will inevitably end in a kernel panic - I don't know if the card is bad or just loose, but I don't feel like tearing my screen apart to get to the antenna.

And I didn't feel like paying Apple $250 or Simutek $190 to get a replacement.

So I bought one of these - http://afterthemac.com/product.php?id=5062 - and my god does this thing seem chintzy. If I were a betting man, I'd guess this small company just bought a boatload of cheap Belkin or D-Link USB adapters, put their (rather ugly) afterthemac.com sticker on them, and sold them at a $30 markup (which I begrudgingly paid).

With the included driver (it came on a burned CD with a peeling label! Yay!), I could only connect to open and WEP-enabled networks - trying to connect to my WPA-protected home AP would crash the wireless utility. Awesome. Oh, and afterthemac.com doesn't have links to updated drivers. Also awesome.

Looking in my System Profiler, it was clear that this adapter had a Ralink chipset (oddly enough, the same chipset used in OS X-compatible D-Link and Belkin adapters that sell for less!). I'm actually pretty sure that Ralink is the only company that makes OS X-compatible wifi products. But that is neither here nor there - bottom line is that I found their website, downloaded their latest drivers, and was able to connect to my WPA-protected AP.

I don't get to find out whether or not this'll get me on UAWifi until tomorrow, though :( - but since it only does WPA-PSK, I'm not too hopeful.

EDIT: Oh yeah, this is definitely a rebranded D-Link adapter. I should've guessed, since the USB-extension base has a giant D-Link logo on it.//feels oblivious

[Unregistered]

Ralink is not the only maker of Mac OSX compatible products, there are several other chipsets which are Mac compatible, but as far as I know, manufacturers like Dlink generally do not provide Mac support for their "compatible" products. I don't know if this company you wrote about does, but if they do then that may make it worth the extra money. What generally determines the compatibility for Mac is the chipset. Just because someone uses a Ralink chipset and so does Belkin or Dlink, that does not necessarily mean someone has rebadged a Belkin or Dlink adapter and marked up the price. In this case it appears to be so as you noted about the Dlink branded base, but in other cases it could just be a no-name manufacturer using the same Ralink (or other brand chipset) in their product. I personally would rather buy an adapter from a company that would support the product for Macs as opposed to a big name manufacturer who only offers Windows support.