[ale] USB wifi recommendation

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

"Michael H. Warfield" <mhw at WittsEnd.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 2013-07-24 at 19:39 -0400, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>> I built a Mint 13 machine (based on Ubuntu 12.04) recently. The guys
>> at micro center recommended the asus usb-n10 wireless-n150 adapter.
>> It's been working fine on wifi G. I haven't tried it on wifi N. I
>> haven't tried the one you mentioned.
>
>Is it both 2.4GHz and 5GHz?  There are a lot of the adapters out there
>that claim to be "N" but only on 2.4GHz.  Particularly the smaller,
>cheaper, devices.  Even the Nexus 7 table is that way.  No support for
>the 5GHz band but still claims to support N.
>
>> Sincerely,
>
>> Ron
>
>Regards,
>Mike

Hi Mike W,

I looked up this document:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_N

According to that, 5 GHz capability is not required according to the standard.  I think you have to look for something that says dual band.  According to the packaging on the particular product I mentioned, which operates up to 150 Mbps, it does NOT support 5 GHz.  However, their N600, N750, and N900 products DO support 5 GHz.  Since higher bandwidths require merging channels, it may be hard to find the available channels to merge in many locations.  Of course, you almost never find an internet connection that gets anywhere near these max speeds.

I hate the way these companies label things.  I couldn't find those products on their website, but I did find the following two items.  These are physically NOTHING like the 1" micro dongle that I described.  But they do support 5 GHz.

http://www.asus.com/us/Networking/USBN53
http://www.asus.com/us/Networking/USBN66/

HTH

Sincerely,

Ron


-snip-



--

Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
Please excuse my potential brevity if I'm typing on the touch screen.

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier
770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT techstarship.com
Litecoin: LZzAJu9rZEWzALxDhAHnWLRvybVAVgwTh3
Bitcoin: 15s3aLVsxm8EuQvT8gUDw3RWqvuY9hPGUU