ORiNOCO


[Image:Chipsets2.png|thumb|Chipsets]
ORiNOCO was the brand name for a family of wireless networking technology by Proxim Wireless. These integrated circuits provide wireless connectivity for 802.11-compliant Wireless LANs.

Variants

Lucent offered several variants of the PC Card, referred to by different color-based monikers:
  • White/Bronze: WaveLAN IEEE Standard 2 Mbit/s PC Cards with 802.11 support.
  • Silver: WaveLAN IEEE Turbo 11 Mbit/s PC Cards with 802.11b and 64-bit WEP support.
  • Gold: WaveLAN IEEE Turbo 11 Mbit/s PC Cards with 802.11b and 128-bit WEP support.
Later models dropped the 'Turbo' moniker due to 802.11b 11 Mbit/s becoming widespread.
Proxim, after taking over Lucent's wireless division, rebranded all their wireless cards to ORiNOCO - even cards not based on Lucent/Agere's Hermes chipset. Proxim still offers ORiNOCO-based cards under the 'Classic' brand.

Rebranded products

The WaveLAN chipsets that power ORiNOCO-branded cards were commonly used to power other wireless networking devices, and are compatible with a number of other access points, routers and wireless cards. The following brand and models utilise the chipset, or are rebrands of an ORiNOCO product:

Preferred wireless chipset for wardriving

The ORiNOCO is preferred by wardrivers, due to their high sensitivity and the ability to report the level of noise. The pre-Proxim ORiNOCO cards have a jack for attaching an external antenna.

Linux drivers

A Linux Orinoco Driver supported the IEEE 802.11b Hermes/ORiNOCO family of chips. It was included in the Linux kernel from version 2.4.3 until its removal in 6.8.