USB wifi adapters?

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pjw

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#131094 8-Oct-2013 19:57

Hi,
I bought a USB wifi adapter for our desktop last week, which has been moved to a space where it can't easily get a wired connection. One of these:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/networking-modems/wireless-networking/adaptors/auction-646532930.htm

Now, it doesn't appear to quite work... I can happily connect to my network (Windows claims 65Mbps, so plenty of wireless signal), but it appears there's some issues with it. Webpages don't load correctly - they tend to half-load and then timeout. I've seen "content encoding error" etc, which to me indicate a massively high error rate or something similar.
I see the same behaviour under both Linux and Windows, so I doubt it's a driver issue.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how to work out what's wrong with it? I'm just not sure what would make it half-work!

P.

PaulBags

809 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#910113 8-Oct-2013 21:16

I'm going to take a guess that the problem is that you paid $9 on trademe for a device no bigger than the end of your thumb, %90 of which is the USB connector itself, and expect it to perform like an actual wireless network card.

But in the interest of helping out others more knowledgeable than I to help you I'm going to ask: what router are you connecting to, and have you used the wireless on it before? How far away is the router? Through what type of walls? What other devices do you have in the 2.4ghz range (old wireless landline phones etc), or wireless noise in the neighbourhood? Have you tried a different wireless channel? What are the specs of your computer? Have you tried it in a different USB port?

pjw

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#910132 8-Oct-2013 21:21

Yes it was cheap. I do expect it to actually work though, and not give ping times of 4 seconds.
As for your questions, yes, wifi on this router has been working fine (smartphones and laptop have had no issues). I've tried both at home and at work, different USB ports on each PC. The router is right next to the device (1m away) to try and make sure it's got nothing to do with low signal strength.
The PC itself is an i5 with 6GB of RAM.

richms

28187 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#910139 8-Oct-2013 21:32

Have about 4 of those which I got for my raspberry pi's

Anyway, the antenna is crap in them, very directional and low gain. Get them on a USB extension cable and try moving around. As its only a 1x1 config you get no multistreaming etc which really helps with non line of sight connections.

Richard rich.ms