Wireless Network Cards

On April 1st I purchased an ASUS WL-167G USB wirless network card for 60,000 won. In Australia it costs from $55 to 77 dollars!

Usually Korean prices are a little more expensive then Australia and much more expensive then Americia.

The product specifications mention USB 2, but I got it working on my USB 1.1 Windows XP laptop at work with no major problems.

Driver & Utilities Download Page

The ASUS WL-167g WLAN USB2.0 adapter Card utility release note and utility progrm in English, version 2.2.8.0.

The ASUS WL-167g WLAN USB2.0 adapter Card utility release note and utility progrm in Korean, version 2.2.8.0.

The ASUS WL-167g WLAN USB2.0 adapter Card driver for Win98SE/WinME/Win2K/WinXP

OS X Driver 2004/10/07 Version 1.0.5.0

Got this working on my iBook G3 900 Combo. I disabled the built in Airport Card and installed the driver. I then had to reboot.
When OS X loaded it ran an ugly utility called RaConfig2500 which detected the ASUS card and my local wireless network … but it did not work !

Went to System Preferences and the Network icon. It detected a new port – Ethernet Adaptor (en2) I enabled the port and BINGO, it worked!
As a test I set my Linksys Router to G Mode only and I got

475 KB/s incoming to windows,
467.5 KB/s upload from OS X

Now, that is not very impressive, but using Airport Express (B mode only) I got

624.9 KB/s incoming to windows,
623.1 KB/s upload from OS X

hmm … not good ! The G mode is actually slower! More work needs to be done to find out why.
But if you are looking for a wireless adapter for the Mac, particullary, any old Mac’s which can’t accept the new Airport cards, then this is a good deal.The price is cheap and it works!

I will test the card with Apples Airport Express later.

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