My new Wireless Card

I ordered from Amazon.com a couple of weeks ago a PCI wireless card for my computer. It arrived the day before Thanksgiving so I didn't get a chance to open it until I had gotten back from visiting family.

I did a bit of searching to find the one I wanted. I ended up choosing Zonet because they like to use chips that work in Linux. The model is the zew1601 and it is a 54 mbps with WPA2 support. It has the RT2500 chipset and is supposed to work "Out of the Box" on most Linux distributions, specifically Ubuntu.

I opened the box and got the card out. Installed it without a problem and hooked it up. Started the computer up into Ubuntu and checked the wireless cards and it was listed. Worked like a charm.

Now all I had to do was connect it to the router. The problem is that the router is setup to use WPA. I already knew this though and had a guide ready for setting up the card. I followed it, copying the text into the interfaces file and then had it connect. Unfortunately, it couldn't. It wouldn't get an IP. This is where I spent most of my time. Trying to figure why it couldn't get an IP.

Eventually I remembered that the router was setup to block by MAC addresses. I then added my MAC to the allowed list and I was then able to get an IP and was running by wireless. The great thing is it works off of startup too. No going into the console to run a command everytime you boot the machine.

So, if you're looking for a wireless card in Linux for your desktop that is easy to setup, look no further than a card with the RT2500 chipset. These things are great and have WPA support built into the driver so that they are easy to configure.

Zonet zew1601
54 mbps
Chipset: RT2500

Here's the guide I followed to setup the card:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/RalinkRT2500

Here's the list of cards witht the RT2500 chipset:
http://ralink.rapla.net/

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