Recommended Wireless NICs?

Mooshe · April 5, 2017

I've recently built a new computer. I thought the motherboard had integrated wi-fi, but I misread the specifications. I'm currently looking for a WNIC (PCI-E or otherwise) which people have had positive experiences with.

Almost every WNIC I find available seems to have some issue with linux, whether it be lack of drivers, slow speeds, etc. (I had a USB wireless adapter, but required ndiswrapper, so latency was very inconsistent and got up to 300ms pings just to the router)

I was looking at the ASUS PCE-N15, but I'm unsure how well this will work (there seems to be mixed feedback from a few years ago), so I wanted to see if anyone here has any experience with this.

For more information, here's my system specs:

CPU: AMD FX-8320
Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon R7 260X
Memory: DDR3-1866
Motherboard: ASUS 970 Pro Gaming
Operating System: Ubuntu GNOME 16.10 64-bit

SCHISCHKA · April 5, 2017

you need to look at the chipset not the brand. unfortunately they dont always advertise the chipset. I use Alpha cards because they are cheap, theres a local official distributer and they provide proper spec sheets so its easy to pick a card with the ath9k chipset

https://www.alfa.com.tw/

Mooshe · April 5, 2017

4 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

you need to look at the chipset not the brand. unfortunately they dont always advertise the chipset. I use Alpha cars because they are cheap, theres a local official distributer and they provide proper spec sheets so its easy to pick a card with the ath9k chipset

https://www.alfa.com.tw/

Yeah, while the ASUS PCE-N15 doesn't have the chip listed on the amazon page, I downloaded the linux drivers off of the official site, and it seems to be drivers for multiple chips (probably to keep it universal for all of their adapters). Here's what's listed in the README:

Quote

--This driver supports follwing RealTek PCIE Wireless LAN NICs:
   RTL8188CE/RTL8192CE
   RTL8191SE/RTL8192SE
   RTL8192DE

also, the spelling isn't my fault; the README is littered with typos. Seems the person who wrote it had issues with their "O" key.

SCHISCHKA · April 5, 2017

I downloaded the original version of the driver, not the updates, and im only seeing one driver; RTL8192CE. I think your readme shows several drivers because you downloaded the one of the updates.

According to Debian it's included in the kernel

https://wiki.debian.org/rtl819x