Help finding a decent wireless dongle

[DrStupid87]

Hello all.

So my internet has been suffering a lot as of late. It's about time I found a USB Wireless dongle that can boost my signal strength (Priority) and give me a good bitrate (more than 100mbps) at a price that won't break the bank (Between £10-£30) that can be found in the UK.

Anyone got any ideas or preferred dongles?

Cheers in advance.

 

[thiosk]

I can't help you on your request, sadly, but I have hereby declared "Dongle" to be the word of the day.

 

[DrStupid87]

Hah. You sure? There's plenty of room for stuff like "flabbergasted" or "squeegie".

 

[blipblop]

dont know what you have too pick betwen but i use a huawei and it works ok.
here on the other side of the ocean they building the 4th gen mobile internet and it comes at 80mbit speed if you have it there get it!

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I'm keeping up with this thread as increasing the pick up radius of my netbook would be lovely.

Bookmarked.

 

[Dags90]

The only thing I can tell you is that all of the one's I've had have broken within two years, some faster than that. I'm starting to think that they all suck. In fact, I'm starting to think that consumer wireless is more or less all crap.

 

[Hoplon]

USB dongles are for channers and mac users.

If it's a desk top get a proper nic pci card, if it's a lap top then boy you boned.

 

[DefunctTheory]

They don't make or use the word dongle enough. Back in the day, everyone and their mother had a dongle, and everyone shared and was merry.

But... no. Dongles aren't very stable, certainly are not that fast (If you want over 100 all the time, you have to wire into something), and are pretty expensive over all.

....Dongle Dongle Dongle Dongle....

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

They don't make or use the word dongle enough. Back in the day, everyone and their mother had a dongle, and everyone shared and was merry.

But... no. Dongles aren't very stable, certainly are not that fast (If you want over 100 all the time, you have to wire into something), and are pretty expensive over all.

....Dongle Dongle Dongle Dongle....

What's with the need to hit 100 anyway? Unless you're having a LAN party or transferring a lot of files over your local network, you don't actually need a connection that fast, because it's going to be bottle-necked by your internet connection. 10 megabits is above average, and 50 is blinding fast; I've never heard of any consumer connection that approaches 100.

Edit: And if you somehow did get a connection that fast, the servers of the sites you tried to connect to would turn into the bottleneck. Case in point, The Escapist, which is a pretty big bottleneck even on a 10 MbPS connection.

 

[DrStupid87]

The only thing I can tell you is that all of the one's I've had have broken within two years, some faster than that. I'm starting to think that they all suck. In fact, I'm starting to think that consumer wireless is more or less all crap.

There lies the problem. I used to have wired but it's not impossible without drilling massive holes in the wall. Luckily it's improved (wireless) over the years and some people tell me that it's much more reliable.

What's with the need to hit 100 anyway? Unless you're having a LAN party or transferring a lot of files over your local network, you don't actually need a connection that fast, because it's going to be bottle-necked by your internet connection. 10 megabits is above average, and 50 is blinding fast; I've never heard of any consumer connection that approaches 100.

Edit: And if you somehow did get a connection that fast, the servers of the sites you tried to connect to would turn into the bottleneck. Case in point, The Escapist, which is a pretty big bottleneck even on a 10 MbPS connection.

My missus got a 100mbps dongle today and her internets are much more awesome. Plus the bottleneck thing didn't seem to happen. Played a bit of Black Ops on XBL and it was fine. Plus, file sharing does happen a fair bit.
The dongle I have at the minute barely maintains it's connection and slows down terribly when playing online. But very informative. Thankoo!

 

[DrStupid87]

USB dongles are for channers and mac users.

If it's a desk top get a proper nic pci card, if it's a lap top then boy you boned.

define: nic pci card?
If you mean a wireless card, that was my first experience with wireless internet and I cried at my gaming speed. Plus, any links to ones you'd recommend?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The only thing I can tell you is that all of the one's I've had have broken within two years, some faster than that. I'm starting to think that they all suck. In fact, I'm starting to think that consumer wireless is more or less all crap.

There lies the problem. I used to have wired but it's not impossible without drilling massive holes in the wall. Luckily it's improved (wireless) over the years and some people tell me that it's much more reliable.

What's with the need to hit 100 anyway? Unless you're having a LAN party or transferring a lot of files over your local network, you don't actually need a connection that fast, because it's going to be bottle-necked by your internet connection. 10 megabits is above average, and 50 is blinding fast; I've never heard of any consumer connection that approaches 100.

Edit: And if you somehow did get a connection that fast, the servers of the sites you tried to connect to would turn into the bottleneck. Case in point, The Escapist, which is a pretty big bottleneck even on a 10 MbPS connection.

My missus got a 100mbps dongle today and her internets are much more awesome. Plus the bottleneck thing didn't seem to happen. Played a bit of Black Ops on XBL and it was fine. Plus, file sharing does happen a fair bit.
The dongle I have at the minute barely maintains it's connection and slows down terribly when playing online. But very informative. Thankoo!

Well, by bottleneck I didn't mean that everything would slow down to a crawl. What I meant was, while it reads 100 Mbps, your actual internet connection will still be limited to whatever amount of bandwidth your paying for. A fast DSL connection is one or two Mbps, a fast cable connection is about 10, and a FIOS connection tends to be in the 30's or 40's. If your local network is capable of transferring data faster than that, only files transferred directly through that network will actually go at that rate, and if it's going slower than 100 Mbps, it will only be an issue if it's so much slower that it's lower than your download rate. (so if you're getting 50 Mbps on your network, but your download rate is 10 Mbps to begin with, your network isn't bottlenecking your internet at all.) As for what I was saying about servers on the other end being the bottleneck, what I meant was your download speed is limited by the upload speed on the other end. So, if you've got a FiOs connection pulling 40 Mbps, but the server you're trying to connect to only uploads at a rate of 10 Mbps, the fastest you're going to get anything from that server is 10 Mbps.

Edit: To sum this whole paragraph up, your internet connection is only as fast as the slowest link in the chain. Your wireless network is very, very rarely the weak link.

 

[Hoplon]

USB dongles are for channers and mac users.

If it's a desk top get a proper nic pci card, if it's a lap top then boy you boned.

define: nic pci card?
If you mean a wireless card, that was my first experience with wireless internet and I cried at my gaming speed. Plus, any links to ones you'd recommend?

Well, any N standard with a proper aerial such as this Edimax [http://www.ebuyer.com/220221-edimax-wireless-n150-pci-adapter-ew-7711in] or say this Netgear [http://www.ebuyer.com/226706-netgear-rangemax-next-wireless-n-pci-adapter-wn311b-100pes] adapter.

These ones because they have an aerial that isn't jammed behind your PC, the aerial is the biggest problem with wifi since most have fucking terrible aerials on both the router and the PC, the n standard seems to have dealt with a lot of this problem but there is still a lot of total bullshit out there (loads of aerials, things like that)

 

[DrStupid87]

Well, any N standard with a proper aerial such as this Edimax [http://www.ebuyer.com/220221-edimax-wireless-n150-pci-adapter-ew-7711in] or say this Netgear [http://www.ebuyer.com/226706-netgear-rangemax-next-wireless-n-pci-adapter-wn311b-100pes] adapter.

These ones because they have an aerial that isn't jammed behind your PC, the aerial is the biggest problem with wifi since most have fucking terrible aerials on both the router and the PC, the n standard seems to have dealt with a lot of this problem but there is still a lot of total bullshit out there (loads of aerials, things like that)

Ah ok. Thanks for that and the links. All aerials I had accidentally got kicked off.