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The USB wireless adapter they give to tenants in this apartment complex are wholly unreliable and detestably inoperative. The way the infrastructure was set up is shady, bad cable management, placed in odd locations (congested routers in a small area). It's a mess and I need some recommendations for a good network card, as they tend to have a stronger signal, drop less frequently and are overall just better suited to my needs.
At first I thought it was only the router for our apartment, but only part of the problem. I ran on the same network using my Chromebook and noted that pages loaded faster, downloads were more consistent and didn't drop as frequently. In fact, with this adapter that the office gave me, I barely see more than two routers on the network, with the one I use disappearing from range very frequently. Just to give an example of how bad the signal is affecting speed, here are some ping test results.
About the routers first of all, they're actually professional-grade and high quality, the problem is they were improperly configured and all use the same channels and we, the tenants, can't change the settings. After running ping tests, I often get lag in excess of 2500 ms, which is horrific and makes it impossible for even the most basic browsing. When it doesn't show the ms, While a network card won't be a miraculous change, it will be a crap load better than the POS adapter they gave. It's a hand-me-down and is probably pretty dang old and on the verge of dying out.
Basic browsing is a chore, the wireless on my laptop and Chromebook work fine and don't have this lag, so that points to my adapter being the issue; conclusion, USB adapters are typically worse than cards. A download for a 40 MB file had an ETA of 2 hours, and that isn't hyperbole.
Here's the test, it's pretty bad:
What are some good brands of cards?
At first I thought it was only the router for our apartment, but only part of the problem. I ran on the same network using my Chromebook and noted that pages loaded faster, downloads were more consistent and didn't drop as frequently. In fact, with this adapter that the office gave me, I barely see more than two routers on the network, with the one I use disappearing from range very frequently. Just to give an example of how bad the signal is affecting speed, here are some ping test results.
About the routers first of all, they're actually professional-grade and high quality, the problem is they were improperly configured and all use the same channels and we, the tenants, can't change the settings. After running ping tests, I often get lag in excess of 2500 ms, which is horrific and makes it impossible for even the most basic browsing. When it doesn't show the ms, While a network card won't be a miraculous change, it will be a crap load better than the POS adapter they gave. It's a hand-me-down and is probably pretty dang old and on the verge of dying out.
Basic browsing is a chore, the wireless on my laptop and Chromebook work fine and don't have this lag, so that points to my adapter being the issue; conclusion, USB adapters are typically worse than cards. A download for a 40 MB file had an ETA of 2 hours, and that isn't hyperbole.
Here's the test, it's pretty bad:
C:\Users\PC>ping google.com
Pinging google.com [74.125.224.160] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 74.125.224.160: bytes=32 time=694ms TTL=55
Reply from 74.125.224.160: bytes=32 time=2435ms TTL=55
Reply from 74.125.224.160: bytes=32 time=2802ms TTL=55
Reply from 74.125.224.160: bytes=32 time=2400ms TTL=55
Ping statistics for 74.125.224.160:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 694ms, Maximum = 2802ms, Average = 2082ms
Also ran a tracert for google as a test to see how bad it really was
C:\Users\PC>tracert google.com
Tracing route to google.com [74.125.224.160]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 685 ms 13 ms 1501 ms 192.168.6.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * 2551 ms 10.8.201.37
4 2614 ms 3086 ms 2539 ms eth_3-3_prv02-rt02.veracitynetworks.com [97.75.190.166]
5 * 1541 ms 3062 ms 97.75.191.66
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * 3838 ms GOOGLE-INC.edge1.LosAngeles9.Level3.net [4.53.228.6]
12 23 ms 21 ms 21 ms 64.233.174.238
13 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms 72.14.236.11
14 23 ms 24 ms 42 ms lax02s01-in-f0.1e100.net [74.125.224.160]
Trace complete.
Pinging google.com [74.125.224.160] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 74.125.224.160: bytes=32 time=694ms TTL=55
Reply from 74.125.224.160: bytes=32 time=2435ms TTL=55
Reply from 74.125.224.160: bytes=32 time=2802ms TTL=55
Reply from 74.125.224.160: bytes=32 time=2400ms TTL=55
Ping statistics for 74.125.224.160:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 694ms, Maximum = 2802ms, Average = 2082ms
Also ran a tracert for google as a test to see how bad it really was
C:\Users\PC>tracert google.com
Tracing route to google.com [74.125.224.160]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 685 ms 13 ms 1501 ms 192.168.6.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * 2551 ms 10.8.201.37
4 2614 ms 3086 ms 2539 ms eth_3-3_prv02-rt02.veracitynetworks.com [97.75.190.166]
5 * 1541 ms 3062 ms 97.75.191.66
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * 3838 ms GOOGLE-INC.edge1.LosAngeles9.Level3.net [4.53.228.6]
12 23 ms 21 ms 21 ms 64.233.174.238
13 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms 72.14.236.11
14 23 ms 24 ms 42 ms lax02s01-in-f0.1e100.net [74.125.224.160]
Trace complete.
What are some good brands of cards?