Fastest USB Wifi Adapter?

I am seeing USB Wi-Fi adapters out here now running at 450+1300mbps? If this
is true would they be faster than your normal wired Internet?

Artreid wrote:
I am seeing USB Wi-Fi adapters out here now running at 450+1300mbps? If
this is true would they be faster than your normal wired Internet?

I see it uses 802.11ac. Took a few moments to clue into the x+y thing,
which I hadn't seen before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11ac

"This is accomplished by extending the air interface concepts
embraced by 802.11n:

wider RF bandwidth (up to 160 MHz),
more MIMO spatial streams (up to 8),
multi-user MIMO
high-density modulation (up to 256 QAM)."

In the example here, the "x+y" nomenclature is a lie. Apparently
this product doesn't bond the two standards together or anything.
And even when using 5GHz radio (as usual for Wifi), comes nowhere
near the stated rate. More snake oil from the wifi industry.
So rather than 450+1300, it should read "450 or 1300", and then
in small print "about 200 if you're lucky".

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...0&ParentOnly=1

The slide here, shows the "1300" part, works at around 24 feet distance.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/cache...over_range.jpg

A typical result.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/image...n_location.jpg

Judging by the spikes in the plot, you'd better have buffering on
multimedia devices.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/cache...m_80mhz_dn.jpg

The only end user to post a comment to that article states:

"Finally got 24MB/sec through two brick walls and a corrugated
iron roof to play high def movies on n-wireless "Smart" Samsung TV."

So that's the kind of rate you might expect. 24*8=192Mbit/sec + overhead

As long as you don't have unrealistic expectations, you'll get
some usage out of it. Like 802.11n, it goes through the "draft"
releases of products, before the standard is signed off and
new products all adhere to the standard.

Paul

On 02/20/2013 12:34 PM, Artreid wrote:
I am seeing USB Wi-Fi adapters out here now running at 450+1300mbps? If this
is true would they be faster than your normal wired Internet?

450+1300mbps is what? 1750 millibits per second!

That would be only 1.75 bits per second. You can send with a wigwag flag
faster that that!

I suspect you meant Mb/s.

If so, that is likely your speed at the USB port, not the speed online or via
the radio portion of the adapter.


--
John

When a person has -- whether they knew it or not -- already
rejected the Truth, by what means do they discern a lie?

On 2/20/2013 11:46 AM, John F. Morse wrote:
On 02/20/2013 12:34 PM, Artreid wrote:

That would be only 1.75 bits per second. You can send with a wigwag flag
faster that that!

Now that's funny

Paul wrote:
Artreid wrote:
I am seeing USB Wi-Fi adapters out here now running at 450+1300mbps?
If this is true would they be faster than your normal wired Internet?


If you get one with USB3 (and have a USB3 port on the computer),
that will also make the promised rate possible.

http://www.wikidevi.com/wiki/List_of_802.11ac_Hardware

Otherwise, if you had say, a 30MB/sec USB2 limit, that would limit
you to 240MBit/sec, leaving much of the promised bandwidth on the floor.

Paul

Artreid wrote:

I am seeing USB Wi-Fi adapters out here now running at 450+1300mbps? If this
is true would they be faster than your normal wired Internet?

Just how is any hardware you install going to speed up the service tier
you bought from your ISP? You adding a bigger pipe on your end doesn't
change the bandwidth pipe your ISP gives you. It also won't speed up
web sites who have a max bandwidth and throttle their multiple
connections to all their visitors so each gets some response.

If your ISP contracts to provide you with, say, 12 Mbps, you aren't
going to magically get more because your end can handle many Gbps for
bandwidth. Ethernet (wired) has had 1 GBps NICs for a long time now.
Yeah, your own intranet will be fast. That won't change what your ISP
gives you or what sites further throttle you down to.

mbps? Or did you mean to write Mbps? There's a big difference.

mbps = millibit per second
millibit = 0.000125 bytes

Mbps = megabyte per second
megabyte = 2^20 bytes = 1,048,576 bytes

The faster wifi adapters will give you faster INTRAnet bandwidth but
then do you really have them at every host? If one host is operating at
100 Mbps then connecting it to a 1.7 Gbps wifi adapter isn't going to
speed up traffic to that host. You'll have to replace ALL your NICs and
network adapters, hubs, routers, etc so they all support whatever
minimal bandwidth you are targeting. That's great for you and your own
hosts. Does nothing to speed up your INTERnet speed through your ISP.