[Tfug] Need advice - consumer fraud caught on a WiFi adapter

[Choprboy]

On Friday 05 December 2008 22:59, Jim March wrote:
> Guys, this is a wild one...
[snip]
> [jim at critter ~]$ lsusb
> Bus 002 Device 002: ID 14b2:3c27 Atheros Communications Inc
[snip]
> So I google "Fedora 10" with the device ID: "14b2:3c27"...and I get
> links like this:
[snip]
> ...telling me that the device ID refers to an rt2870 chipset - which
> in turn can't broadcast.
[snip]
> Uh huh.  OK.  What we have here is fraud.  A Netgear USB WiFi device
> that says right on the box "Atheros" was $50.  Somebody set up this
> cheapo card to be a fake Atheros device.


... Unfortunately, I think you are going to be out of luck unless it actually 
says "Atheros" on the box. Ignoring the fact that many devices are 
manufactured under different names, many finished products of the same name 
use different underlying components.  You can't explicitly rely on lsusb to 
tell you the truth either. In this case, I believe it has outright lied to 
you! 

In this case, it looks as though the lsusb hardware id list is incorrect 
(contact the maintainer Stephen J. Gowdy <gowdy at slac.stanford.edu>). The 
usb.ids file has manufacturer ID 14b2 listed as "Atheros"... but Atheros 
already has 2 other manufacturer IDs listed:
0cf3  Atheros Communications, Inc.
        0001  AR5523
        0002  AR5523 (no firmware)
        0003  AR5523
        0004  AR5523 (no firmware)
        0005  AR5523
        0006  AR5523 (no firmware)
168c  Atheros Communications
        0001  AR5523
        0002  AR5523 (no firmware)

There the product IDs appear to match with ARxxxx Atheros chipsets. The 14b2 
manufacturer ID, on the other hand, is shown with completely different known 
product IDs:
14b2  Atheros Communications Inc
        3a93  USB WLAN Device
        3c02  C54RU WLAN
        3c22  C54RU

What is a "C54RU" usb wifi device??? A Conceptronic device which uses Ralink 
RTxxxx based chipsets http://www.conceptronic.net/ (look thru the FAQ and 
support downloads... its Ralink stuff). So it looks like someone submitted 
a "14b2" manufacturer ID  as Atheros to the list maintainer and he published 
it... but that is not correct. A manufacturer ID of 14b2 should 
be "Conceptronic", which may be sold under a couple different names including 
Airlink101.

I would suggest that you do a "lsusb -v" on the device again, check 
the "iManufacturer" field, which I believe is a text string from the device 
itself. The standard lsusb output is just a match of the manufacturer/product 
IDs to the usb.ids file. So like I said, I think your out of luck....

A couple days ago, I voted in the Slashdot poll "Just a handful of bug 
reports, but boy were they good!".... guess I was right.


Adrian