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PCI Adapter for Wireless

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Gerry Pasternack

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Looking for a good, inexpensive PCI Adapter to add wireless capability to a Win/XP desktop. Located about 65 feet (and 3-4 walls) from my DSL modem-Gateway.

Any recommendations?
 
I got linksys PCI card with speedbooster. I also have a slow USB dongle for laptops. The PCI performance is 56MB/s (includes speed booster) and is almost as good as the ethernet connection for my DSL internet service. Works great for home networking too. The USB dongle is 2MB/s. A faster dongle will be limited by the max speed of the USB connection. I'm not sure the max USB 2.0 rate but I think it is around 14MB/s?

RG
 
I've got a Belkin USB G Wireless Aadapter using the Ralink rt2570 chipset.

It's their model F5D7050 (same model as in this photo):

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=179211

It can plug into a USB Port directly, or it can plug into the included stand so that you can locate it further away from your USB ports.

I've also got a Netgear WG311 (version 3) Wireless G Adapter. It's PCI.

Guess which one works much better? The USB attached Belkin.

Because you can locate the USB adapter easily to get a better signal, it's much preferred over the PCI adapter (which has an antenna that you can move on it's back).

Link quality with the Belkin is much better.
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JimC
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http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield
 
If this is a stationary desktop, you have an IQ above 90, and you want to blow away any of the suggestions above in terms of performance, reliability and flexibility:

Get a cheap G series access point (Linksys tend to fit this bill), and plug the darn thing into your existing ethernet port. Use that as a bridge, and you won't have to fart around with drivers, opening your PC, clunky USB Wi Fi mini-port drivers that can't be uninstalled or other nonsense. Been doing this for years, and clients love it.

USB WiFi is an absurd joke....wait...I should use the term 'hardware hack' pushed by ISP's that don't have the time to spend with clients that can't figure out a basic PCI NIC card. Then again PCI Wi Fi NIC cards for the most part aren't that good either.
 
Member said:
Member said:
Member said:
I've also got a Netgear WG311 (version 3) Wireless G Adapter. It's PCI. Guess which one works much better?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
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No need for the punchline since I know it's not the Netgear based on experience with their client based Wi Fi and their terrible performance.

A Linksys or Belkin G series access point on the other hand will annihilate the USB access point in terms of broadcast and reception, and not require driver installation.
 
Although speed id not the issue here, I've been told that PCI connection is much faster than USB. My main concern is range.
 
Seems like overkill. All I need is a wireless PCI Adapter with a range of 65 ft. For my application lightning speed is not required.

What Adapter would you recommend? I've tried Netgear WG311v3. Works OK, but signal level is barely acceptable.
 
I tried the PCI Netgear 311 and its range was poor. Looking for a PCI replacement .
 
Jim Cockfield said:
I've got a Belkin USB G Wireless Aadapter using the Ralink rt2570
chipset.
Click to expand...
I'm using a Belkin Wireless G PCI card, model F5D7000, based on the Ralink RT2560 chipset.

I'm using it at half the distance as the original poster (about 35 feet), and get a solid 54.Mbps connection.

I did have some issues with the card dropping connections for no reason when using the (rather old) Belkin drivers, so I switched to much newer Ralink drivers, and the problem was solved. I am using XP/SP2's built in wireless support to manage the card, WPA and all, as opposed to RaConfig.

If distance is an issue, then one advantage of most PCI cards over most USB adapters is that you can replace the antenna with a better one (though distance is not an issue for me at only 35 feet, and I'm using the included antenna).

Heidi's PC uses a Buffalo Wireless G USB adapter, at the same distance, and her connection doesn't seem as strong as mine. Also, in her case, I couldn't get WPA to work using XP/SP2's built in wireless support (which is odd), so I used the Buffalo control panel, which worked fine.

My laptop has built in wireless, and it has no problems at longer distances than above, and I'm using XP/SP2's built in wireless support with no issues.

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Gerry Pasternack said:
Seems like overkill. All I need is a wireless PCI Adapter with a
range of 65 ft. For my application lightning speed is not required.

What Adapter would you recommend? I've tried Netgear WG311v3.
Works OK, but signal level is barely acceptable.
Click to expand...
I don't think that working well is over kill, and just yesterday I had to wing it in a craptacular job 100 miles from my office with a Best Buy and Staples as the closest resources. The Linksys AP bridged a POS controller to the gateway of last resort and I didn't have to deal with any drivers or any compromises with protocols used. I also had better reception where the comparison is putting a NIC in a similar system at similar distance.

I would also suggest improving the access point. You can get optional antennas for many or get a Cisco AP. Cisco costs more, but nobody every tells me that they don't like reliability and performance. I gone into sites where a particular stooge retail systems provider strings up 5-6 pieces of department store junk and 3 Ciscos cover it.

None of the department store stuff is the best, but I have noticed that Linksys post sale support is better than others and will work with Windows drivers so you don't have to add extra cr_p. No warranty, but there are often Cisco trade up deals for Linksys too.

Above all stay away from the USB dongle suggestion and anything where one person or a few did something once or a few times and think it's the best even though everything written on the Internet is true.
 
And they you can pop a good Aironet card in it - I see they are very inexpensive at times, and I use them in Hobart scales. We got 15 of them for scales about 1.75 years ago, and they've never been touched or had a hiccup.
 
Here is a screen capture from last night. I meant to post it then.

If you can do better with a Comcast Cable Modem connection, please let me know.

This is a Belkin F5D7050 with an rt2570 chipset running under Sidux 2007-2 (a Linux distro) using it's built in rt2500usb driver.

The Windows drivers included on this card's CD also work great (under either Windows XP Pro or Linux with ndiswrapper).

If your Cable modem account does better than this, more power to you.

I only used these because they came up in the top search results using google. If I were doing any peer to peer type stuff it would be one thing. But, from my perspective, the capabilities of the adapter and drivers exceed my internet acccess speed anyway. The PC I'm running the tests from is down the hall and on the opposite side of the house from my router (Linksys WRT54G).







--
JimC
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http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield
 
Is there a difference between a wireless access point device and a wireless router device? I tried to set my Belkin F5D7230-4 Wireless G router as an access point, to connect my desktop to my Westell wireless DSL router, but it was a no-go under any circumstances, so I went with the Belkin wireless PCI card I mentioned earlier, which works fine.

If there is not really any difference between an AP and a router, then how do I tell if a router has AP capability? Apparently this particular Belkin router will only work as an AP with another Belkin router.

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Eric Carlson said:
Is there a difference between a wireless access point device and a
wireless router device?
Click to expand...
You probably mean a router with an access point built in. Access points are really bridges - they bridge the same protocol across different media. Routers route - they move all traffic to a gateway of last resort or they move traffic to nets they know via tables of networks they know manually or through routing protocols. Routers over time mostly became routers (bridging routers) and then consumer product labeling further confused things must like millions of confirmed idiots think their routers are doing NAT (network address translation) when they're doing PAT (port address translation).

I'm sure a little search engine time will yield good information if this does not make sense.
 
What does this have to do with the fact that ice cream generally has no bones? I apologize if I missed how the topic got away from LANs and bridging.

If you want to measure speed over multiple hops it's best to look at an extended trace route where you will see the speed between specific hosts and where any bottle necks might exist.
 
Thaks to all for the advice.

I replaced the Netgear WG311 v3 PCI card with a Buffalo Wireless-G 125 PCI card. My signal strength went fron "1 bar" to "3 bars" -- an definate improvement (and a $10 savings), but I'd like to do better. My next step is to play with antenna orientation or perhaps add a remote antenna.

Any further suggestions?
 
Gerry Pasternack said:
better. My next step is to play with antenna orientation or
perhaps add a remote antenna.
Click to expand...
Those sound like good next steps if you still desire a higher signal strength. Are you going to try that on both ends? A directional antenna, on either or both ends, is also an option, but probably overkill for such a short distance.

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Although I've never had a wireless signal failure, an indication of "Low Signal" doesn't sit well with me. So my next step will be to add a simple "corner reflector" at each of the Gateway antennas. The cardboard and foil design I've seen cost less than $1, takes about 15 min to construct, and claims a signal boost of more than 11 db !

I'll let you know if it works.
 
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