Wireless N Adapter recommendation.

[Poppa_Meth]

I have a customer with a desktop PC with 1 PCI and one PCI-E slot available. He want's a wireless N card to connect to a Mi-Fi in his house. It seems like Ralink chipsets are prevalent and problematic in the driver department. Can anyone offer any suggestions?

[ricoman]

I'm very happy with my Lynksys E2000. I've had it for 3 mos. now and not a single dropout or loss of signal.

[jman98]

I'm using the Belkin Wireless N150 USB adapter F6D4050 and it's worked reliably for me. Is there a reason why your customer wants to give up a PCI or PCI-E slot for a card rather than just use a USB adapter? I have used Linksys products in the past and they have worked reliably for me so I'm sure ricoman's suggestion is a good one. I just bought the Belkin based on cost and convenience (my local Best Buy had a good price on it).

[yoda313]

Is there a reason why your customer wants to give up a PCI or PCI-E slot for a card rather than just use a USB adapter?

There is a possibility its an underpowered system and the user has a ton of usb devices connected. It could be they are thinking they'll get a better result with a dedicated network card than a usb device in a jumble of usb devices.

It is said that usb can handle up to 128 or so units on one chain. Perhaps they are maxing out? Unlikely but plausible.

Also the other thought that comes to mind is they don't have any free plug in slots on a power strip and think that powered units are better and don't have room for a powered unit???

Just some thoughts...

[Poppa_Meth]

I guess a USB isn't out of the question. In the past I've always gotten better performance out of a PCI adapter than a USB but maybe those times are past and the current USB adapters are better.

[TimA-C]

Is he just wanting to connect to the internet or share/stream data over the network? (I'm assuming that your "Mi-Fi" in the the first post was a typo and not some abbreviation that has so far passed me by?) From personal experience USB adapters are normally fine for sharing internet as long as they've got a reasonable signal strength, but not as good as pci wireless cards when shifting large amounts of data over a network. (I've never tried a pci-e card so can't comment, but would assume that they're at least as good as a pci card.) I don't know if this is a power over the USB bus, antenna size, or heat issue. (I used to have an old Netgear usb wireless 'b' adapter that I had to drape a damp bit of tissue over if I was downloading anything bigger than a couple of megabytes to stop it from overheating.)

Am currently using two Linksys WMP600N pci cards going through a Netgear DGN2000 wireless router and although I'm getting the same 270Mbps and 'Very Good' signal strength on both PCs and a similar initial copying speed (according to Windows) of around 2900 to 3500 Kilobytes/s as I had with the various USB adapters I tried first (Tenda N150, Tenda N300, a couple of different Edimax, BlueNext, and TP-Link 54G), it's much more constant with the pci cards. The link speed and actual copying speed often dropped during the transfer with the USB adapters but not nearly as much with the pci cards. It's still not as quick as I would like and maybe I'll be able to tweak it when I get time, or maybe it's the router - do 270Mbps wireless connections go through the same 100Mbps switch in the router as the wired connections? Would I be better off with a Gigabit router? I did try replacing both legs - one at a time - with a couple of 200Mbps powerline adapters but saw absolutely no difference in speed compared with the pci wireless cards. All things to explore when the evenings start to close in again.

[Poppa_Meth]

Mi-Fi or mifi is the cellular wireless hotspot a lot of companies are now offering. Kind of a cellular modem/router.

[TimA-C]

Ah! Oh well, probably disregard everything I said!

[Poppa_Meth]

Still valid points on the USB which is what he ended up going with. It'll be for net connection only. Even P2P doesn't work well on a cellular connection. Transferring files over the local network is probably not something to be done with a Mi-Fi either.

[Moontrash]

usb

TP Link 722 works just fine

PCI

TP Link also has some decent slot cards also

Chipset for TP Link is Atheros..the best there is

[budwzr]

The MiFi doesn't do "N". Only up to "G". It is a sweet device though.

I use it to listen to Pandora in the car via iPod.

[Poppa_Meth]

usb

TP Link 722 works just fine

PCI

TP Link also has some decent slot cards also

Chipset for TP Link is Atheros..the best there is

It was a TP Link USB adapter he ended up with.

[Poppa_Meth]

The MiFi doesn't do "N". Only up to "G". It is a sweet device though.

I use it to listen to Pandora in the car via iPod.

Not sure what it does in real usage but the MiFi is suppose to do Wireless N according to the specs from Verizon.

[budwzr]

The MiFi doesn't do "N". Only up to "G". It is a sweet device though.

I use it to listen to Pandora in the car via iPod.

Not sure what it does in real usage but the MiFi is suppose to do Wireless N according to the specs from Verizon.

Oh, really? Maybe I'm wrong. But anyway, the data rate is only 1.5 Mb at best, and I was thinking that a cheaper "G" wireless adapter would still be overkill at 50Mb, unless the OP has an "N" wireless router at home.

My experience with wireless "N" is like you attach a 3/4" water pipe to a 1/2" pipe. There's no net gain in real world throughput.