USB wifi adapter or internal card?

[BunnyB]

Hello, i'm wondering which one would be the best between USB wifi adapter or internal card, which one should i pick? Also if you could give me some information on why cable is so much better than wifi that would be nice, some good reasons.

Thanks for your response in advance. ^^

 

[USAFRet]

Ethernet cable to the router is faster, more secure, suffers no congestion with the neighbors WiFi, has the same speed no matter the distance (within 100 meters), and won't drop offline if someone uses a cordless phone.

WiFi has the benefit of no cables.

As far as USB or PCI-E? Either. You might squeeze out a little more performance with a multi antenna PCI-E card, assuming you have a compatible router.

 

[Shaun o]

Usb for me.
Because it means you can disable it by removing it so no one else can use the wi-fi for starters on the computer if removed.
Plus it comes in handy if you need to get another computer connected.
Than having to dig around inside the computer case to do so.
Since it will fit a laptop or a system case to get internet.

As for wired well, it is better in many ways.
You will always get what we call a lower Ping or latency through it.
Where as wi-fi can suffer from, signal quality due to walls, the signal degrades over distance far mode leading to a reduction in speed.
And problems with cross talk if too many routers are working in the same area broadcasting on the same wireless channel.
cluttering up the air waves.

The latency is often higher with a wi-fi connection due to these effects.
So when gaming for example people prefer a wired connection over a wireless.
As the factors are eliminated with a wired connection.

It depends on what you wish to do, and how many devices run at the same time in your house using the wi-fi connection of the router also.

 

[USAFRet]

And for me, wired all the way, except when physically impossible. (WiFi cards to my cameras, for instance.)

I'm moving into another house in a few months, and am in the planning stages of running Cat6 all over rather than rely on WiFi.

 

[BunnyB]

Thanks for your answers guys, i'm having a hard time on choosing what way i should go, i think i might just go internal card because i have no need of ejecting the usb or changing the computer. I really want a wire but my dad doesn't want to drill holes and i'm prolly just gonna live here for under a year more and it's only me and him here so a PCI card would be fine. ^^

 

[bill001g]

It is mostly a personal preference. Used to be USB was slow but now usb is fast enough to even attach hard drives.

The key advantage I see for USB is if the wireless signal is not optimum where you want to use the computer you can put the USB on a 15ft cable and improve your signal. With internal cards you may have limitation on where you place the pc and still get enough signal. There are microwave rated antenna extensions but you tend to lose a lot of signal with those.

The main advantage for PCI (other than you can't lose the card) is that there are many that support 3x3 mimo where it is very rare on a USB device. But if you router does not also have 3 antenna to support this it does nothing and it may not work in some houses anyway.

 

[gjdemon]

Bunnyb,

Im in the same boat as you sir. After installling a lovely new Asus GTX 770 card my combo bluetooth wifi card wouldnt connect to the internet. Turns out the wifi part broke on its own.

To see if the wifi was the problem i purchased a very cheap usb wifi adapter, TP-Link 300mbps. Its very good and i had it installed in 20 seconds. Internet started working so lovely job. I did notice that the wifi signal isnt great though and the connectivity did drop more than i would have liked. It was slightly slower than my wifi card so i decided to put in a internal card in.

Signal is better and speeds are far more consistent. moving into a new house soon and i will try and hard wire the pc then.

Let me know how you got on?