Wireless USB or Wireless card

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Apr 1, 2008
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I've just bought a wireless router and used it to create a wireless network between two laptops around the household and it works fine. However, I have another computer and I want to connect that to the wireless router. I have two decisions, a wireless USB or a wireless PCIE card. Which one is more reliable or it depends on the price and quality of either one?
 
In my experience (with Netgear, Belkin, Linksys, and D-Link brands), PCI/PCI-e cards have generally had greater signal strength and stability. YMMV, of course. The option to add a higher strength antenna is also there with the card as well, if necessary.
 
In my experience (with Netgear, Belkin, Linksys, and D-Link brands), PCI/PCI-e cards have generally had greater signal strength and stability. YMMV, of course. The option to add a higher strength antenna is also there with the card as well, if necessary.

Depends on the card itself and the direction that the remote (wirelessly-connected) computer is facing with respect to the location of the router. I had a Linksys WMP600N internal PCI card that sucked at 5GHz reception compared to a Netgear WNDA3100 USB dual-band adapter. And even at 2.4GHz, the WMP600N's performance was worse than the WNDA3100. (Unfortunately, the WMP600N is the only internal dual-band card that's easily available; all of the other internal cards including all of the PCI-Express models that I could find in stores are 2.4GHz only.) The fact that the rear of the computer is facing away from the router only made the WMP600N's mediocre reception worse. And this was less than 25 feet between the PC and the router.

External antennas are a bit overrated, IMHO. The ones that I could find locally are all 2.4GHz-only models - and they do absolutely nothing when it comes to improving the reception on the WMP600N: The reception was just as mediocre as it was with the stock antenna. I then read up, and found that the only way to improve the performance would be to also install an external antenna to the router itself (but unfortunately, most new consumer routers have internal built-in antennas with absolutely no provision at all whatsoever to connect an external antenna).
 
Thanks for your input guys, I have bought a PCI-E network card.

Problem is, both my router and network card is 300mbps but when I checked the network status it is at 300mbps max. How do I increase it to the full 300mbps and will this increase the speed? I've already checked my router settings and it is set to 300mbps by default.
 
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