The device is A Belkin Surf N300 wireless usb adapter. It seemed to work out of the box with ubuntu 13.10 as the system recognized the device and installed the correct driver (rtl8192cu), howver after a while (random from few minutes to hours) it lost connectivity without the network-manager knowing it. After a bit a googling around I found the following solution here:

First of all, ensure you have the necessary prerequisites: $ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential dkms git

Clone the updated driver with git: $ git clone https://github.com/pvaret/rtl8192cu-fixes.git

Set it up as a DKMS module: $ sudo dkms add ./rtl8192cu-fixes

Build and install the driver: $ sudo dkms install 8192cu/1.8

Refresh the module list: $ sudo depmod -a

Ensure the native (and broken) kernel driver is blacklisted: $ sudo cp ./rtl8192cu-fixes/blacklist-native-rtl8192.conf /etc/modprobe.d/

Let's not take any chances. Instruct Ubuntu to load the new driver when it starts up. $ echo 8192cu | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

Reboot.