In article , AnxiousButFree wrote: :Please excuse me for being stupid. I have a dsl connection 1.5 and its :connected to my usb port but I was told I could get a faster and more secure :connection if I used eternet.
That would depend on whether the xDSL modem and your PC are both running USB 2.0. If not, if one or both are USB 1.0, then the maximum possible throughput is a bit less than 1.5 mbps, and in that case you would be able to get higher throughput rates with a direct wired ethernet connection. If, though, both the xDSL modem and your PC are running USB 2.0, the maximum throughput rate exceeds 1.5 mbps, and you would not gain any performance by going to a direct wired ethernet connection.
In either case, USB connections are at least as secure as direct wired ethernet connections, so you will not gain any security by going with a direct wired ethernet connection.
:So here's what I did: I bought a ethernet pc card :(Actiontec 54 Mbps Wireless PC Card is what it says)
According to the specs at
formatting link
that card has no wired ethernet connector. In order to use that card, you would need to have a wireless router or wireless access point connected to your xDSL connection. Wireless is going to be less secure than a wired ethernet connection in your configuration, especially as that card only supports 128 bit WEP and not WPA or any of the newer security protocols: there are known ways to breach security on WEP, and the problems are such that 128 bit WEP only takes twice as long to breach as 64 bit WEP.
The fact that the card you bought operates at "54 megabits per second" would not make it any faster in your configuration than a card that only operated at "11 megabits per second": in either case, the limiting factor would be the speed of your xDSL modem, 1.5 megabits per second. And as I indicated above, if your xDSL modem and PC are both running USB 2.0 then you are already getting full performance out of your xDSL connection, and putting a "54 megabits per second" wireless link in the middle is not going to improve your performance. It could worsen your performance, though, as it is likely that any wireless setup would have greater latency than a directly wired setup.
:I found out it plugs into :a laptop not desktop! So my question is can I purchase an adapter to use this :card for my desktop?
Probably Yes you could get an adapter, but I can't promise that. Generally speaking, those kinds of adapters do exist: for example, I have some from D-Link and some from Linksys. However, it is possible that the adapters are not interchangable between manufacturers: if so, then you could end up without having an appropriate driver to use the combination. Actiontech does not appear to offer those kind of adapters themselves. I do not have the PC experience to know whether all Cardbus to PCI adapters operate in the same manner.
The cost of the D-Link and Linksys adapters was very close to the cost of their Cardbus wireless cards (the style you got). And you'd need to add a wireless router or wireless access point to make the connection.
:I don't want to go to the trouble of sending it back if I :don't have to.
The card you got appears to be fairly unsuited to addressing the performance issue that you identified as your problem, and making that card work is going to cost you significantly more than going the USB 2.0 or wired PCI ethernet card route.
I would think it unlikely (but not impossible) that an xDSL modem that offered 1.5 mbps service would offer just USB 1.0 and not USB 2.0, so if you are indeed not getting full performance, then that would suggest that your USB connectors on your PC might be USB 1.0. If that is the case, then the easiest remedy would be to get a USB 2.0 card, which would probably offer multiple connectors that you could also use to connect other devices. Getting a wired ethernet card would also give better performance than if you have USB 1.0 on either end of your current connection.
All in all, I would advise you to return the card. I would further advise that you may well not have any performance issue that changing interfaces would help you with -- the only room for improvement is if either your PC or the xDSL modem are using USB 1.0 instead of USB 2.0.