[SOLVED] Is there a difference in range between a 150mbps and a 300mbps wifi adapter?

[talalhashimkt]

I have just returned a product that I ordered online because it had bad reception. It was a 150mbps wifi adapter. Will I get better reception if I buy a 300 Mbps wifi adapter?

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Is there a difference in range between a 150mbps and a 300mbps wifi adapter? Not always.

 

[Lutfij]

The speed with which the adapter receives/broadcasts, does not always mean that it'll be a better buy. You should parse on links to both the adapters you're looking at. On another note, you will also need to make sure you don't have any interference between the wireless AP and your adapter. Speaking of wireless, what is the make and model of your router?

 

[jsmithepa]

As already said, has the potential to, but not a guarantee. I like wireless things with an actual antenna.

 

[talalhashimkt]

The speed with which the adapter receives/broadcasts, does not always mean that it'll be a better buy. You should parse on links to both the adapters you're looking at. On another note, you will also need to make sure you don't have any interference between the wireless AP and your adapter. Speaking of wireless, what is the make and model of your router?

150MB/s wifi adapter: https://www.amazon.in/TP-Link-TL-WN...8&qid=1553673255&sr=1-4&keywords=wifi+adapter

300MB/s wifi adapter: https://www.amazon.in/TP-Link-TL-WN...53673275&sr=8-2&keywords=wifi+adapter+tp+link

 

[bill001g]

The distance and the speed are not directly related. The distance the signal go is a based on purely on the radio output power. This value is restricted by the government and doesn't really matter if you are using it for wifi or a baby monitor.

To get the actual transmit levels you would have to look it up in the fcc data base where they must report this information.

The problem with the tiny usb adapter you linked is they are designed for laptop use where portability and battery usage are more of a priority than the performance. They have tiny antenna and lower power radio transmitters. Both these decrease the range these devices can go.

In general the devices that tend to transmit at the legal maximum have larger antenna and many times are have extension cables included to mount them away from the case.

You will notice in none of the above did I discuss the speed. This is all related to which data encoding method you use to put the data into the signal. It does not affect the actual strength of the signal being sent. Trying to combine the idea of how much speed do I get a some distance is massively complex to even discuss because of all the variables involved. It is pretty simple to discuss DB levels which is how much radio power your receive.

 

[gggplaya]

Distance will be the same because both are nano receivers, external antenna's do help with range. However, bandwidth will be double at the same reception level because the 300mbps unit most likely uses dual internal antenna's. So say you have a 2 out of 5 bars of signal strength and that's good for 20mbps with 1 antenna. With two antenna's you'll get 40mbps of bandwidth. Depending on your application, you may not need the extra bandwidth and the slightly smaller unit is better.

If this is for a laptop who's receiver died. I'd upgrade it to a newer wireless AC unit. Normally this is very easy to do with most laptops. Just flip it over, unscrew the access cover, and plop the new one in. Laptops have the antenna's alongside the lcd screen, so they get great reception.

If this is for something like a raspberry PI. I'd recommend a wireless media bridge. Some routers can be reconfigured as a wireless bridge/ wifi access point if you happen to have an old spare router laying around. Otherwise you can just buy a wireless adapter that bridges with an ethernet cord to the pi, but has a full size antenna and amplifier. If your main router is wirelessAC and you are using this for a raspberry PI, I'd recommend you buy an ASUS wirelessAC router and reconfigure it as a wifi bridge. The AC51U is the cheapest router they have with bridge mode, and it works very well. I use a more expensive 4 antenna model for a wifi bridge and it actually gives me sustained gigabit speeds. https://www.amazon.com/Dual-Band-AC...+wireless+AC&qid=1553692727&s=gateway&sr=8-19

If you're still having trouble trying to get wifi to the other side of your apartment or house, I'd recommend MOCA or powerline ethernet. Don't use wifi repeaters, from experience in knowing people that bought them (ignoring my advice), they usually don't give very good bandwidth. My brother bought a wifi repeater and it could only muster a sustained 10mbps when placed halfway to the other side of his house. I made him get a powerline extender linked here, and now he can sustain over 100mbps of bandwidth. https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Powe...line+ethernet&qid=1553693045&s=gateway&sr=8-7