Belkin 802.11g adapter vs. AirPort

dave782 (apparently) - 09:14am Dec 7, 2005 PST
via email

I've just installed DSL at home, with the DSL modem serving as a
wireless 802.11g base-station. My wife and I have desktop machines at
opposite corners of the house, and I liked the idea of not running
any more wires hither and yon.

The whole process was greatly eased by two Take Control ebooks (TC of
Your AirPort Network and TC of Your Wi-Fi Security). Thanks, Glen and
Adam!

My wife is using an iMac with an AirPort Extreme slot, so no problems
there. My G4, though, only has a plain AirPort (802.11b) slot, and
since I don't want to miss out on all possible bandwidth (no matter
how excessive that may be for my needs!), and since vintage AirPort
cards seem to cost about $170 (!), I decided to buy an inexpensive
third-party 802.11g PCI card instead.

Both the Take Control book and my initial Googling indicated a few
vendors known to produce AirPort Extreme-compatible cards. Of these,
the least expensive card I found was Belkin's F5D7000 "Wireless G".

Thus begins my adventures...

I web-order the card from OfficeMax, and it arrives promptly. Yay!

I install the card and reboot my machine. The result: no evidence
that my OS 10.2.8 system is aware of the card. And the card's LEDs
remain dark.

I send an e-mail query to Belkin. Based on comments I'd previously
encountered via Google, I do not hold my breath for Belkin's response.

I recall one comment on some website about newer drivers being
available for this card. So -- what the heck, I was going to get
around to it soon anyhow for the WPA support -- I update to OS 10.4.
(Thanks, Joe, for TC of Upgrading to Tiger!) Result: no difference.

Back to Google. And TidBITS archives. And more Google... Ah-ha!

Although Belkin's card apparently _used_ to use the same Broadcom
chipset as Apple's AirPort Extreme card, the current version of the
Belkin card (v. 3xxx) now uses a different chipset, apparently from a
company named Ralink.

There's a Tiger driver available for this chipset from
<http://www.ralinktech.com/supp-1.htm>.

I download and install the Ralink driver, and reboot. And now the
card's LEDs light up -- and I find that I'm immediately connected to
the Internet via some neighbor's open wireless server! Meanwhile,
there's still no indication that AirPort is active -- the card shows
up as "PCI Ethernet Slot 2".

After about half an hour of reading unanswered queries from
disgruntled users on the Forum at the Ralink site, I determine that
the driver installer _also_ silently installed an _application_ in my
Applications folder.

With this application I can exert some partial control over the card.
Including turning the card off altogether -- but not otherwise
including any way to tell the card to not connect to my neighbor's
network.

What the heck, my neighbor won't mind me borrowing a little bandwidth
for a couple of days as I wait for my ISP to set up my DSL
connection...

A couple of days later, I plug in my DSL modem, and configure its
wireless functions. I also mess around a bit in the Ralink
application.

Now the card is automatically connecting to my network and not the
neighbor's. Yay! But I don't know whether that's because I've
specified my network in the only defined "Profile" in the
application, or whether the card is simply choosing the strongest
available signal.

Ralink seems to offer neither documentation nor tech support for its
drivers. (And Belkin has never responded to my initial e-mail query
to them.)

Anyhow, I've now been using this set-up for 48 hours, and all seems
to be working. The UI of the Ralink app is a lot clunkier than
AirPort, though. Also, it seems awfully slow to reconnect after
waking the computer from Sleep.

So maybe I'll stick with this arrangement. Or maybe it will get old
soon, I'll order and install the not-quite-as-inexpensive MacWireless
802.11g(Broadcom) card, and move the Belkin card to the Windows
machine I fire up every few months...

(In any case, now the next person to search the TidBITS archives for
this problem will find some helpful info. And Glen can update the
appendix in his TC book.)


[Wow, good story! -Adam]


- Dave Goldman
   Research Software Design