Best Wi-Fi Card

[Meme Cop]

Hi all, 

 

I'm looking at purchasing a Wi-Fi card for my new system. I live in Australia- so I only get around 2 MB/second download speeds, and I have a basic modem. My PC is located directly above the modem, upstairs. Was just wondering what the best option would be of receiving a Wi-Fi connection- Wi-Fi card, etc. What is the best 'budget' Wi-Fi card (under $50). Does 300 MB/450 MB make a difference on a connection like mine? I'd appreciate links to products, etc.

 

Kind Regards all.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Have you considered Powerline? It's a lot more stable than WiFi and is faster. 

[ZetZet]

wdn4800?

[Meme Cop]

Have you considered Powerline? It's a lot more stable than WiFi and is faster. 

Ah yeah, didn't even think of it. Cheers!

[samcool55]

Have you considered Powerline? It's a lot more stable than WiFi and is faster. 

Well seems like your experience with them is different than mine, i have used some powerlines in the past and none of them worked properly, lot of dc's and other issues. I have atm 3 powerlines in my house, 50 bucks/piece and they are cr*p but i don't have a choice because i use them for the TV and they need special powerlines because of encoding/encrypted stuff or whatever.

 

Anyway, to make things clear, MBps and mbps are not the same, MB is megabyte and mb is megabit, difference? 1 byte = 8 bit. So if you have a 2 megabyte/second line, you need at least 16 megabit/second to get that speed.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Well seems like your experience with them is different than mine, i have used some powerlines in the past and none of them worked properly, lot of dc's and other issues. I have atm 3 powerlines in my house, 50 bucks/piece and they are cr*p but i don't have a choice because i use them for the TV and they need special powerlines because of encoding/encrypted stuff or whatever.

 

 

It can depend on the wiring in your house. It can be bad if the house is old or wired badly. 

 

Personally, It's been much better for me than WiFi, especially in my current house which has thick walls and spread out a lot more. 

[Emanuel_M]

Hi all, 

 

I'm looking at purchasing a Wi-Fi card for my new system. I live in Australia- so I only get around 2 MB/second download speeds, and I have a basic modem. My PC is located directly above the modem, upstairs. Was just wondering what the best option would be of receiving a Wi-Fi connection- Wi-Fi card, etc. What is the best 'budget' Wi-Fi card (under $50). Does 300 MB/450 MB make a difference on a connection like mine? I'd appreciate links to products, etc.

 

Kind Regards all.

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/tp-link-wireless-network-card-tlwdn4800

[samcool55]

It can depend on the wiring in your house. It can be bad if the house is old or wired badly. 

 

Personally, It's been much better for me than WiFi, especially in my current house which has thick walls and spread out a lot more. 

Well i tired them in a couple of houses, also tried to get it working at houses of my family, and it was always the same, after 3-6 months they would call me and telling they don't have internet, and eventually going wifi was the solution. Where i live now and where i'm using the powerlines is in a new house (15 years old) so wires are all fine and also with thick walls, but i have no issues with wifi, an usb wifi stick and a 50 euros router and i'm good to go. Wifi is a lot better than a couple of years ago tbh.

[Silverer]

Considered running ethernet through the walls?

Or you can do what I do and just run ethernet cables around your house, better if you have a rental property.

 

Have a look in pc stores near you or pccasegear.com you should be able to get a 20m ethernet cable from like $15 or if you need a longer one theres 50m from about $35

[skywake]

 

I tried posting a reply earlier but the forums went down. Basically there are three decent options at this price point from a quick search I did earlier:

 

$59AU at PCCasegear - Netgear A6210 AC1200 WiFi USB 3.0 Adapter

USB is perfectly fine and in many cases better. You can move it to a position where you get better reception and you can swap it over to a laptop down the track if you need to. AC1200 is the sweet spot in terms of price/performance. This particular adapter? Well the USB 3.0 isn't the thing that caught my eye. Instead I trust the Netgear brand somewhat and this particular model has a decently sized antenna. They have a cheaper one that's tiny, I doubt that'd work very well at all.

 

$59AU at PCCasegear - TP Link TL-PA411-KIT AV500 

Same price but powerline. The best speeds you can get with this will be about half of what you can get with AC1200. By that I mean you'll get maybe 70-100Mbps with this and only around 200Mbps max with the AC1200 adapter. To which you're probably thinking "well why would I get it then?". Basically if you put distance between you and your access point an AV500 powerline adapter will still be running at ~70Mbps when AC1200 has dropped out. Even if you have a really good access point. Hell, with some fairly common setups an AC1200 will never get much above 30Mbps.

 

~$70AU per point - getting a dude in to run Ethernet

Again, based on the prices when I did it? About the same price as the other options. The disadvantage is that you can't move them around once they're in and you have to write off a whole day to get it done even if you pay someone to do it for you. Also if you are going to do it you'll probably end up doing far more than just one point. And doing things like running to an external building? That's quite a bit extra. But it'll run at full speed across your entire house. Every time. Your bottleneck will pretty much always be somewhere else. You don't need the highest end routers to get high speeds, you can get a 16 port switch for about $100AU.