Ralink
More info
- Released
- 2001–2011
- Owner
- MediaTek (since 2011)
- Type
- Chipmaker (Wi-Fi)
Taiwanese Wi-Fi chipmaker found inside a remarkable share of the world's cheap USB adapters and home routers.
Ralink Technology was founded in Hsinchu in 2001 and competed with Atheros and Broadcom chiefly by being cheaper. It worked: Ralink silicon ended up in countless no-name USB sticks and in routers from TP-Link and others, often as a complete system-on-chip with both CPU and radio.
Among Linux users Ralink had the rare reputation of simply working. The company released driver code and documentation, and the community rt2x00 project made its chips a safe bet for anyone running OpenWrt or wanting a card that could do monitor mode. In 2011 Ralink was folded into MediaTek, where its designs live on in MediaTek's router chips.