ORiNOCO Totally Explained

Everything about Orinoco totally explained

ORiNOCO is the brand name that was used for a family of wireless networking solutions by Proxim (previously Lucent). These chipsets (codenamed Hermes) 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: Standard WaveLAN IEEE 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 support for 802.11b and 128-bit WEP 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 however still offer for sale the true ORiNOCO-based cards under the 'Classic' name.

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:

3Com AirConnect

Cabletron RoamAbout 802.11 DS

Compaq WL100 11 Mbit/s Wireless Adapter

D-Link DWL-650

ELSA AirLancer MC-11

Ericsson WLAN Card C11

Farallon SkyLINE

HyperLink Wireless PC Card 11Mbit/s

Intel PRO/Wireless 2011

LA4111 Spectrum24 Wireless LAN PC Card

Lucent Technologies Wavelan/IEEE Orinoco

Melco WLI-PCM-L11

Microsoft Wireless Notebook Adapter MN-520

NCR WaveLAN/IEEE Adapter

Proxim LAN PC CARD HARMONY 80211B

Samsung 11Mbit/s WLAN Card

AVAYA World Card

Preferred wireless chipset for wardriving

The ORiNOCO (and their derivatives) is preferred by wardrivers, due to their high sensitivity and the ability to report the level of noise (something that other chips won't report). The pre-Proxim (or 'Classic') ORiNOCO cards have a jack for attaching an external antenna.

Linux drivers

The open source HermesAP driver supports the IEEE 802.11b Hermes/ORiNOCO family of chips.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Orinoco'.

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