I have 45$ to buy some sort of wireless networking card what do you recommend?

[spacetimematters]

I’ve had bad expirences with usb so unless there is evidence that it is better I think I’ll go with pcie

[sphbecker]

I like this card for the features and price point. It is based on an Intel mobile chipset. The only downside is that you need to use a USB header to enable bluetooth (limitation of the fact that it is made for a laptop). If you skip the USB then WiFi will still work fine, that part is PCIe based.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VNBC5PS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Broadcom's WiFi 6 chipset just came out, so expect those offerings to hit the market soon, but for now, Intel is the way to go if you want WiFi 6.

[dizmo]

Keep in mind, you're only going to get performance as good as your router can provide. The router is the most important piece.

[spacetimematters]

1 minute ago, sphbecker said:

I like this card for the features and price point. It is based on an Intel mobile chipset. The only downside is that you need to use a USB header to enable bluetooth (limitation of the fact that it is made for a laptop). If you skip the USB then WiFi will still work fine.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VNBC5PS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Broadcom's WiFi 6 chipset just came out, so expect those offerings to hit the market soon, but for now, Intel is the way to go if you want WiFi 6.

WHat type of preformance can I expect from something like this? Is bigger better

[Brennan Price]

I would recommend power-line adapters and Ethernet cables. Can't beat that solution  

[sphbecker]

12 minutes ago, spacetimematters said:

WHat type of preformance can I expect from something like this? Is bigger better

For WiFi, having a larger antenna can help. That is my biggest issue with the micro USB drives, they have basically no antenna. This comes with a nice antenna that can attach to the top of the case (magnetic).

 

The other main advantage of PCIe is that you are not using USB bandwidth, but on an USB 3.1 bus, that doesn't really matter anymore.

 

The biggest advantage is that you are getting a reasonable WiFi chipset (this is Intel's mainstream chip that will be included with millions of products next year), it isn't some random chipset that may or may not have good support.

 

As far as performance, if you have a decent 802.11ac router with 2x2 beam forming, then you can probably expect to get 500-600 mbps, if you have an 802.11ax (WiFi 6), then probably over a gig.

[sphbecker]

1 minute ago, Brennan Price said:

I would recommend power-line adapters and Ethernet cables. Can't beat that solution  

To each their own, but I am not a huge fan of power-line, unless you have a specific use case that makes WiFi problematic. The "its wired so its better" line of thinking doesn't really apply to power-line. Power-line is basically a wireless signle transmitted over your copper power lines instead of the airwaves. It has many of the same concerns you hear about WiFi, as well as entirely new issues (such as single drops when a vacuum cleaner is in use).

[Brooksie359]

11 minutes ago, sphbecker said:

To each their own, but I am not a huge fan of power-line, unless you have a specific use case that makes WiFi problematic. The "its wired so its better" line of thinking doesn't really apply to power-line. Power-line is basically a wireless signle transmitted over your copper power lines instead of the airwaves. It has many of the same concerns you hear about WiFi, as well as entirely new issues (such as single drops when a vacuum cleaner is in use).

I have found that powerline either works great or just doesn't work for me. When it works I never get signal outage or packet loss but with wifi I would. That being said I was also at a fair distance from my router making wifi pretty impractical in the first place. 

[Brennan Price]

4 minutes ago, sphbecker said:

To each their own, but I am not a huge fan of power-line, unless you have a specific use case that makes WiFi problematic. The "its wired so its better" line of thinking doesn't really apply to power-line. Power-line is basically a wireless signle transmitted over your copper power lines instead of the airwaves. It has many of the same concerns you hear about WiFi, as well as entirely new issues (such as single drops when a vacuum cleaner is in use).

I believe you are misinformed here... Using power-line adapters does indeed apply to the "It's wired so it's better" as you put it. Power-line adapters still send data over wired connections, however, these wired connections just so happen to also be used by the main's power that all your electrical devices connect to. There is virtually no difference between these and an Ethernet cable, especially considering that most new and decent power-line adapters will be able to clean up the electrical interference that other devices (such as Vacuum cleaners) may introduce to the power supply. 

 

Coming from someone that has a fantastic WiFi connection and still changed to power-line adapters... I can certainly say that they are much better than WiFi. 

[sphbecker]

1 minute ago, Brennan Price said:

I believe you are misinformed here... Using power-line adapters does indeed apply to the "It's wired so it's better" as you put it. Power-line adapters still send data over wired connections, however, these wired connections just so happen to also be used by the main's power that all your electrical devices connect to. There is virtually no difference between these and an Ethernet cable, especially considering that most new and decent power-line adapters will be able to clean up the electrical interference that other devices (such as Vacuum cleaners) may introduce to the power supply. 

 

Coming from someone that has a fantastic WiFi connection and still changed to power-line adapters... I can certainly say that they are much better than WiFi. 

WHAT??? Ethernet uses a highly timed series of bits across 4 copper pairs using voltage modulation. Power-line takes an RF single and transmits it into a copper wire that was not designed to carry it. Both work, but to say they are the same is laughable. Imagine you took two WiFi cards and instead of connected an antenna to either, you connected them to each other using a copper wire (and then turned the transmit power way down), that is basically how power-line works. That is not to say it doesn't work, that is also how COAX works, and we all know that works fine.

 

I am glad you like power-line, but saying it is basically Ethernet, no, not the same at all. It is basically WiFi but without the wireless part.

[Brennan Price]

2 minutes ago, sphbecker said:

WHAT??? Ethernet uses a highly timed series of bits across 4 copper pairs using voltage modulation. Power-line takes an RF single and transmits it into a copper wire that was not designed to carry it. Both work, but to say they are the same is laughable. Imagine you took two WiFi cards and instead of connected an antenna to either, you connected them to each other using a copper wire (and then turned the transmit power way down), that is basically how power-line works. That is not to say it doesn't work, that is also how COAX works, and we all know that works fine.

 

I am glad you like power-line, but saying it is basically Ethernet, no, not the same at all. It is basically WiFi but without the wireless part.

Honestly... I'm stunned that you can comfortably say that WiFi is closer to a power-line adapter than an actual copper cable is. 

The point I'm trying to make is that sure, power-line does indeed transmit data over RF but this is still done through a wired fashion and as such will be better than a wireless connection, that's pure fact.

 

It's like comparing a car (wired) and a boat (wireless) in the way that they get over a flowing body of water, say for example it is a river we are talking about. The car will go straight over the river by bridge and will not/cannot divert its course, the boat however, can still get from one side to the other but will inherently drift due to current/flow of the river which impacts the boats ability to go straight over and as such cannot take a directly straight crossing. 

[spacetimematters]

1 hour ago, Brennan Price said:

Honestly... I'm stunned that you can comfortably say that WiFi is closer to a power-line adapter than an actual copper cable is. 

The point I'm trying to make is that sure, power-line does indeed transmit data over RF but this is still done through a wired fashion and as such will be better than a wireless connection, that's pure fact.

 

It's like comparing a car (wired) and a boat (wireless) in the way that they get over a flowing body of water, say for example it is a river we are talking about. The car will go straight over the river by bridge and will not/cannot divert its course, the boat however, can still get from one side to the other but will inherently drift due to current/flow of the river which impacts the boats ability to go straight over and as such cannot take a directly straight crossing. 

How do I tell I forgot a power line adapter will work, how do I tell if they are on different curuits it’s pretty close to each other

[Brennan Price]

Electrical circuits will be set up for different elements of the home. For example your plugs may be on a different circuit to the lighting in your house. It generally varies depending on the age of the house etc, however, it is worth just looking at your circuit breaker in your house as it may be labelled as to which bits are what. If that is the case then you'll probably have no issues. 

[sphbecker]

23 hours ago, Brennan Price said:

Honestly... I'm stunned that you can comfortably say that WiFi is closer to a power-line adapter than an actual copper cable is. 

The point I'm trying to make is that sure, power-line does indeed transmit data over RF but this is still done through a wired fashion and as such will be better than a wireless connection, that's pure fact.

 

It's like comparing a car (wired) and a boat (wireless) in the way that they get over a flowing body of water, say for example it is a river we are talking about. The car will go straight over the river by bridge and will not/cannot divert its course, the boat however, can still get from one side to the other but will inherently drift due to current/flow of the river which impacts the boats ability to go straight over and as such cannot take a directly straight crossing. 

I think you misread my post. I was rebutting your comment when you said "There is virtually no difference between these and an Ethernet cable." There are huge differences in the way the technology works, that was my post. Power-line is functionally more like WiFi than it is to Ethernet. If you want an analogy, WiFi is like a microphone that picks up sound-waves in the air. Power-line is like the needle on a record player that picks up sound-waves carved in to vinyl. Ethernet is like getting sound from an optical audio cable. The first two both deal with vibrations, the last one is sound modulated into a digital format and transmitted with EM waves. Ethernet is a direct switching technology, WiFi and Power-line are both RF. Just read a little about how HomePlug AV2 works, you will see terms like "2x2 MIMO," which sure sound a lot like terms you hear when talking about WiFi (because it is basically the same technology modified for power-line use...my point).

 

I think the misunderstanding is that I was talking about how the technologies work and you are making comments about how well they work. So lets shift gears.

 

Yes, in theory power-line should work better than WiFi because the transmission medium is a more controlled environment with less noise. All things being equal, power-line would be the clear winner. In reality, far more research and development has been done for WiFi. WiFi's latest standards blow the doors off anything power-line can currently do, and based on the rate at which power-line technology is released, we shouldn't expect that to change anytime soon.

 

It is not that sending bits over the airwaves is a better idea, its really isn't. It is that you have vastly more sophisticated technology backing WiFi than you do with Power-line.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Let's not forget, powerline is also prone to killing DSL if your electrical cabling and phone line run too close to each other.  So you absolutely need to know how a user is receiving their broadband before considering it.

 

Over here in the UK, Sky were originally going to use powerline to hook up their Sky Q Mini boxes to the main unit.  They changed their mind, no doubt due to real-world testing finding it just wasn't reliable enough.  They chose WiFi instead, that's rather telling IMO.

[spacetimematters]

2 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Let's not forget, powerline is also prone to killing DSL if your electrical cabling and phone line run too close to each other.  So you absolutely need to know how a user is receiving their broadband before considering it.

 

Over here in the UK, Sky were originally going to use powerline to hook up their Sky Q Mini boxes to the main unit.  They changed their mind, no doubt due to real-world testing finding it just wasn't reliable enough.  They chose WiFi instead, that's rather telling IMO.

I do have a dsl line in my house although we dont have anything plugged into it