MediaLink 802.11g Wireless USB Adapter

When setting up my new office recently one of the test machines wound up being a distance away from the rest of the systems and the wired network. Rather than going through the hassle of dropping a CAT-6 line to this test station, the quicker and easier approach was to just pickup another USB WiFi adapter. The wireless adapter ended up being the MediaLink USB54G that offers USB 2.0 and 802.11g support, but only mentioned compatibility for Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, and Vista systems. How did the MediaLink USB adapter working out under Linux? Quite well.

The MediaLink wireless USB adapter is compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g networks with transfer rates up to 54Mb/s. For wireless network security, this adapter supports both WPA/WPA2 and 64/128/152-bit WEP. For Windows users this hardware and driver are WHQL certified on Windows 2000 / XP / Vista, but no mention was made anywhere regarding Linux support. MediaLink is a company we previously have not dealt with at Phoronix and in fact, not a whole lot is known about them. MediaLink is a company based out of New Jersey that currently just sells a wireless USB adapter (the product being tested here), wireless router, wireless PCI adapter, and a wireless card-bus adapter for 802.11g and 802.11n.

MediaLink's MWN-USB54G adapter arrived in a small cardboard box that was rather plain. Included with the USB 2.0 WiFi adapter was a small user's manual, a driver / Windows software CD, and a USB 2.0 extension cable.