Gigabyte AirCruiser N300 802.11n WiFi Adapter

After following the instructions on the previous page, the Gigabyte AirCruiser N300 with its Ralink RT2860 802.11b/g/n ASIC should be working on Ubuntu 8.04 or any other Linux distribution. To check to see if the wireless device has been detected you can use the network-admin interface or more favorably is NetworkManager. We were running the AirCruiser GN-WI30N-RH in a PCI to MiniPCI adapter and within a few minutes we were up and running with Ubuntu 8.04 and ndiswrapper. NetworkManager had quickly found our two wireless test points, which was a D-Link DGL-4300 Gaming Router and ASUS WL-500g Premium. The AirCruiser N300 had excellent strength for the distance away from these two wireless access points.

The Gigabyte AirCruiser N300 (GN-WI30N-RH) wireless adapter was tested by transferring large (and many small) files across the wireless LAN as well as gaming and surfing the Internet. Through all of this, the AirCrusier N300 GN-WI30N-RH had worked reliably and no connection issues were experienced. This multi-standard wireless card had a much stronger signal to both of our wireless access points compared to a NetGear WG511T 802.11g (Atheros-based) adapter.

Conclusion:

While the Ralink RT2860 lacks "out of the box" Linux support, there is an available open-source (GPLv2) wireless driver for Linux provided by the manufacturer. In addition, this 802.11n draft chipset does work with ndiswrapper using the Microsoft Windows XP driver. In the case of our testing we had used ndiswrapper with the Gigabyte-provided driver. The Gigabyte AirCruiser N300 had worked well and had no troubles with our Linux WiFi usage. The Gigabyte GN-WI30N-RH supports 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n draft networks with MIMO support. Right now the GN-WI30N-RH is only available to system integrators, but it can be found online for approximately $50 USD. Permitting you don't mind using ndiswrapper (or properly build the open-source driver), this is a good alternative if you're looking for something outside the realm of Intel and Atheros WiFi adapters.