Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2010 11:06 am Post subject: Question about wireless adapters
How big is the difference in performance between a usb wireless adapter and a PCI one?
Right now I've got a cheap usb one, and I only get 5mbit on a speedtest, while my internet connection is 30mbit. My sister does get 30mbit on her laptop...
So yeah, should I get a PCI adapter? _________________
PCI(-E) has greater bandwidth. USB1.1 is only 12Mbps whereas USB2.0 is around 300Mbps. Altho usually USB2.0 tops at ~32MBps (256Mbps) tho.
The quality of the wlan stick, the wlan spec it supports and the quality of the signal are more important tho. 802.11a/b only support 11Mbps and 802.11g supports 54Mbps. Depending on the quality of the modem and your adapter, these might not be reached.
The biggest advantage over PCI card is that the only thing coming out is the antenna when the usb stick looks ugly eg.
Maybe your stick only supports 802.11b revision and it's very cheap -> poor performance.
Have you tried multiple concurrent downloads? That's the way how to measure your bandwidth. You should try eg. 10 downloads from fast speed servers (your local ISP's/country's Linux distro FTP server) during the night when there are no other users and check the total speed. Then start investigating where the problem is.
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