Discussion Dekstop Wifi Network Card Recommendation and Home WiFi Setup Suggestions

[PrinceXizor]

A little bit of a broad discussion, but all topics intersect as well.

First, the immediate question is: I need to install a WiFi card in my desktop so I can position my desk where I want to in our new apartment. I know little about modern network card specs vs marketing at this point in my computer life. Tips? Not looking to go ultra-cheap, not looking to be cutting edge either.

Related, when we moved we went with Spectrum and I purchased a Negtear Nighthawk AC2100 that I'm using for WiFi access off of the provided modem. Since I have my own WiFi access, any suggestions on configurations? We have 1 laptop, 2 tablets, 2 phones, Roku Stick and soon to be main computer.

Thirdly related, my spidey sense tells me we are reaching a nexus of value similar to when I purchased my current computer guts on the used market. I currently have an Ivy Bridge i5-3750k w/ 16GB RAM on a Z77 Pro4 board. So, I'm beginning to acclimate myself to prices and trends and I'm also looking to update/streamline my storage.

So the network card is first. But I'll probably piece-meal the rest while targeting a good combo deal either used on the forums as before or a microcenter bundle or similar.

I know it's broad, but thanks for your patience and comments!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, there are AX200-based Wifi 6 NICs available. (Look on ebay.)

Other than that, there are USB and PCI-E wifi AC 1x1 (Mostly USB), 2x2 and 3x3 NICs.

What speed is your internet connection? Do you have, or plan to get, a NAS unit? If so, do you plan to access it over the wifi? (Not a good idea, from both a performance and security standpoint, but some people are in apts and such and can't run wires.)

 

[PrinceXizor]

No, I don't plan to run a traditional NAS due to the reasons you listed (apt, bad security/performance with wifi). But, I would still like some sort of centralized storage. In general, and because of my wife's growing eBaying that needs a smoother way to take pictures and transfer them where needed. I'm not opposed to running some ethernet if the situation warrants it. But, its too early to know how this will play out. I don't do any streaming (plex, etc) so that's a non-issue.

The main desktop has onboard LAN of course, just no WiFi.

Edit: Sorry, I have Spectrum. Just ran speedtest 118 Mbps Down, 12 Mbps Up

 

[PrinceXizor]

I'm also pretty unfamiliar with USB network plug-ins. Are they good/the same/worse than a PCI-E card? I've got plenty of USB's on the back but most would be 2.0.

 

[SamirD]

What's keeping you from using wired? Have to run wires between rooms? There's other solutions that can work better than wifi in an apartment complex (because everyone is using wireless in an apartment complex and the airspace is usually completely jammed with noise).

 

[VirtualLarry]

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Buy several, for spares.

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Or maybe the above, if you don't need BT. (These are 2x2 AC.)

Wireless USB Bluetooth4.2 WiFi Adapter Dual Band Dongle Network LAN Card Antenna | eBay

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I use these personally, and am happy with them. (200Mbit/sec over AC, small 2-room apt.)

 

[SamirD]

I wouldn't get a cheap nic. I've found them to be flaky in general compared to an intel or other top teir brand.

That being said, I wouldn't buy any top teir brand from ebay or amazon due to all the fakes.

 

[mxnerd]

Agree with SamirD, good wifi adapters cost money. Wouldn't trust cheap wifi adapters from eBay.

Some reviews below.

The best USB Wi-Fi adapter in 2021

Keep a solid connection with one of the best USB Wi-Fi adapters.

www.pcgamer.com

The 7 Best USB Wi-Fi Adapters, Tested and Approved by Lifewire

USB Wi-Fi adapters should be compact, fast, and have a large range. We tested to find the best models that will help you stay connected wherever you go.

www.lifewire.com

 

[SamirD]

Too bad the best wifi adapters look like spiders on the desk. Hence why I'd use something like an 2000av powerline or moca vs wifi. Or even a 'gaming adapter' or whatever they call those ethernet to wifi bridges these days.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

Note $20 off promo code.

 

[Fallen Kell]

If this is your primary computer, I would seriously look into using wired network especially in an apartment building. You are in a very congested space with lots of other people all having their own wireless networks, which means there will not be any clean network channels for your network (meaning that both yours and the other people who are all using the same wireless channels will be sharing the bandwidth and causing tons of network broadcast collisions forcing the wireless devices into collision recovery protocol, drastically slowing down the performance even more than what you would think the intuitive "oh well there are just two of us using the same channel so it will just run at 1/2 speed", when the reality is that it will more likely run at 1/8 or 1/20th the speed, especially since you can't control if there happens to be a G or even worse a B speed network device connected to one of the other networks using your same channels, forcing everything down to that speed on top of the other issues involved).

So, even after all of that, you then have to worry about all the people who will try and hack your network to snoop for things like credit card, online banking/financial info. In such a confined space, you are an easy target to people with proper gear. It is almost laughably easy given enough time to breach even the best protected wireless networks to snoop on what is happening on them and then inject and possibly hi-jack the network session.

Best thing to do is bite the bullet and put down a 25 or 50 foot ethernet cable and run it along the wall and use area rugs and/or floor cable covers when you absolutely have to.

 

[SamirD]

Some really good details about the shared bandwidth in a apartment setting. I know, I dealt with it for a few years in one of our apartment buildings. Several neighbors signal strength from the damnned xfinity hotspots would be stronger than our own signal in our own apartment 10ft away! Everything was great when the whole building was 10% occupied but once it filled up, I had to actually double the speed of our plan to have the same wifi speed we used to enjoy on 5Ghz. And 2.4Ghz was completely useless then because you couldn't even get 1Mbps.

I always used wired in some form since the apartment had ethernet jacks in the rooms, but in one location it was too far away so I used a powerline. wifi in mdu's (multi-dwelling units) really bites compared to a stand-alone house. My parents place has zero issues and has lesser equipment than what we have in our apartment.

 

[PrinceXizor]

So, Etherent cables are a possibility, but unlikely. It's an apartment, but not in a big complex; single story side-by-side units. So, some congestion, but not a ton. Probably only a little bit more than living on a crowded street in a single dwelling.
I'm unfamiliar with other non wifi options for apartment networking...anywhere I can read up on these in a non marketing speak way?

It MIGHT be possible to make one run from the wifi/router location to the main computer but I'd have to get wifey permission first.

 

[SamirD]

Gotcha. Okay, so some other non-wifi ways of networking are primarily powerline and moca.

Powerline requires basically a wall outlet where you put ethernet into the powerline network and also a wall outlet where you connect a device to the powerline network. It's the simplest thing to install as you can have it literally running in 5 minutes from opening the package. The downside is speed, which varies due to the noise in the electrical wiring which it uses to carry the signals. However, that being said, if you get a powerline 2000 unit, I think you might just have enough bandwidth to get 100Mbit ethernet. Yes, like in the wifi world, powerline bandwidth ratings are misleading.

Moca requires a cable wire that is hopefully a direct connection to another cable wire. You can use splitters, but they have to work with moca. This is the hard part of moca--the wiring. If you have a small demarc where all your cable wires come in and you can easily plug two of them together via a coupler, you can quickly make the wiring work for you. The next step is pretty simple, you plug in a moca adapter at each end of the coax run and plug in ethernet. In my experience this part also takes only 5 minutes from the time you unpack the box. And the benefit is that bonded moca 2.0 and higher is a true gigabit speed. Non-bonded isn't bad either as I get 500Mbps over mine--well above the speeds you have for Internet.

There is actually a third, but isn't used as much anymore because it tops out at about 100Mbps--vdsl ethernet extenders. The main strength of these units was their ability to go beyond traditional ethernet distances, sometimes even several kilometers.

Hope this gives you a bit more info!

I'd start with a pair of powerlines. And you may finish 5 minutes later.

 

[VirtualLarry]

One thing to note about PowerLine Ethernet adapters. They are usually sold in kits of two units, but can be expanded to more.

However, many ship "open", and are able to connect to any other powerline adapters that they find connected to an accessable AC outlet/line. This may be problematic, in an apt. setting. They generally ship with a tool, that you can run on a PC (you plug the powerline ethernet into the PC using an ethernet cable, and run their program to configure them), that will allow you to program an encryption key (usually, 128-bit or 256-bit AES). Some just require you to physically push a button on both units, and they will exchange keys and sync up.

Still others, may come from the factory, as a "pre-encrypted connection pair", and require re-pairing, if you add more nodes to your powerline network. (It works a lot like a mesh.)

There was a thread not too long ago, on here, where someone in an apt. complex, had used powerline, and found that they were connecting to their neighbor's router. Oops!

 

[SamirD]

Great additional information! I was going to add some of that, but I forgot.

 

[mxnerd]

Amazon got several Intel AX200 based PCIe cards with good reviews now.

Amazon.com : ax200 pcie card

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow, there's even a Gigabyte branded AX200 card for desktop. Might consider that.

 

[SamirD]

I'd be curious as to how the wireless compares with the powerline. Even if the bandwidth is the same, there's no way the latency will match powerline.

 

[PrinceXizor]

Well, just did a n00b mistake...I ended up snagging the Gigabtye AX200 card from Amazon but....my computer had Win 7 Pro! It's only compatible with Win 10. So, after apparently borking my windows install trying to install the driver from the included DVD I managed to recover after about 3 hours (system restore wouldn't work, had to use the F8 repair pathway which I've never actually had to do before. So time to discover this fix and time to do it). Anywho, I just upgraded to Windows 10 (before MS closes the loophole) and...

After installing the card, but before doing anything with drivers, Windows hung before getting to the user log-in screen. A quick google and this isn't an uncommon issue. Any AT'ers know the right fix for this? Does it have anything to do with my current Realtek onboard network adapter? It's from an ASRock Z77 Pro4 and it seems to also use the PCIe, so I didn't know if that was an issue.

 

[SamirD]

I would have just looked for generic AX200 win7 drivers as I'm sure they must exist. Otherwise, you may want to do a clean install at this point.

 

[PrinceXizor]

Probably, but after 3+ hours stuck in a "Can't Run Chkdisk, do a system restore" "Can't do a system restore, run chkdisk" loop. I was a little leery of proceeding down the win 7 path. I use Win 10 at work now, so the whole system shock of upgrading isn't there anymore either. So, it made sense. It was too late at the time, to test if it REALLY had to do with the card or could have been one last glitchy farewell. My main reason for posting this mundane story (more coffee anyone...?) is to check on the whole PCIe logjam idea.

Is this possible? The onboard NIC is definitely using the PCIe bridge and I have one PCIe x 1 slot that seems conveniently close. Can I run both at the same time? Is there a reason this card might not be compatible with my motherboard? I updated some motherboard component drivers after upgrading to Windows 10 but did not have time to install the new card and check yet.

 

[SamirD]

Well, if you're wondering if it's a hardware issue, boot a linux live cd and see how it works in that. That will clear up if it's a hardware issue or not.

 

[hugmatj]

One thing to note about PowerLine Ethernet adapters. They are usually sold in kits of two units, but can be expanded to more.

However, many ship "open", and are able to connect to any other powerline adapters that they find connected to an accessable AC outlet/line. This may be problematic, in an apt. setting. They generally ship with a tool, that you can run on a PC (you plug the powerline ethernet into the PC using an ethernet cable, and run their program to configure them), that will allow you to program an encryption key (usually, 128-bit or 256-bit AES). Some just require you to physically push a button on both units, and they will exchange keys and sync up.

Still others, may come from the factory, as a "pre-encrypted connection pair", and require re-pairing, if you add more nodes to your powerline network. (It works a lot like a mesh.)

There was a thread not too long ago, on here, where someone in an apt. complex, had used powerline, and found that they were connecting to their neighbor's router. Oops!

What you mention about powerline Ethernet being similar to mesh networking seems reasonable to me - yet my mesh network (fed through the house via powerline ethernet) is disregarding a pair of powerline adapters (admittedly, different manufacturer) completely.

Granted, the devices behave as if they are connected by a single cable so I'm able to connect them to one of my networks and get the project working, but my solution is ugly as heck. Is it possible for a piece of 3rd party software to get my Belkin av500 powerline adapters to function as additional nodes in a powerline Ethernet network? The bloody things have MAC addresses and Ive yet to see them via Wireshark.

Opnsense, pfsense, endian, libre cmc, and ipfire are the software based router/firewall network management tools I'm looking at. The question is - which one will see my old ass Belkin powerline ethernet adapters and enable me to rope them into my Tenda Nova MW5 mesh network.

 

[PrinceXizor]

I guess I'm officially old now...is that what techies have today, a drawer full of Linux Live CD's?
Fortunately, after reinstalling it, then Windows "hanging" again. I rebooted, tapped F8 to bring up booting into safe mode to manually install the driver and....it booted fine and hasn't had an issue since after multiple reboots.
Go figure.