The chipset on a USB wireless adapter is the most important information but normally is not shown on the product box or even on the device itself. The version 1 uses two different chipsets, which is Atheros AR9170 and AR9102 while version 2 has the Atheros AR7010 and AR9287 chipsets, and the latest version 3 uses Realtek RTL8192CU.

For example, the TL-WN822N USB wireless adapter by TP-LINK comes with 3 versions. If you’re looking to purchase a fully compatible plug and play USB wireless adapter that works really well with BackTrack 5, it can be tricky because some brands with the exact model can have a different chipset for different version numbers. It is relatively easy to get BackTrack running by installing using UNetbootin and booting up the live version from USB but the most important thing is to make sure that your USB wireless adapter supports monitor mode and packet injection. The reason why BackTrack is being used instead of Windows is because there are no patched drivers available for Windows that supports injection, unless you are willing to fork out $300 or $700 for an AirPcap TX/NX adapter. BackTrack is a very popular free Linux distribution that is commonly being used to hack into wireless networks by using Aircrack-ng to crack the WEP/WPA encryption.

8192cu driver linux 3.12