Non-USB 11ac network adapters

No recommendation, but there seems to be plenty of 802.11ac PCI-e cards to choose from:

Thanks, Jeff.

I was having a brain cramp and couldn't remember what my current 802.11n NIC interface was and I didn't want to pull the tower out from under my desk and open it up to look. It has a PCI-e interface. As a result, I was searching for "11ac adapter" and 99% of the results were USB interfaces. To make things more interesting, currently the distance from my router to my PC is almost 40' going through 3 walls and a refrigerator. If I rearrange my office, I can possibly eliminate one wall and the refrigerator interference.

Since my PC will be sitting under my desk, something with a cable between the antenna and the interface that would allow the antenna to be at or above the level of my desk.

Bob

Y'er welcome.

That will help, but going 40ft through 3 walls and a fridge seems rather marginal. I don't think it will work with an internal 802.11ac card and will probably slow down to 802.11g speeds.

Several ideas:

1. Locate the antenna as high as possible to miss the fridge. Use a USB 2.0 802.11g or 802.11g/n adapter mounted on the back of a panel antenna. Something like this antenna: and this radio: Note that with a 2.4GHz only antenna, a dual band radio is a wasted effort.

1. Attaching a single external antenna to an 802.11n or ac radio is another wasted effort. However, if you must have an internal PCI-e card, all you'll find are dual band and 802.11ac radios. The trick is to find out which external antenna is the "main" antenna. Plug your external antenna into that SMA connector and ignore the others.

2. You can buy external 802.11ac antennas: I don't have any experience with these and don't plan to in the future. You're on your own here.

1. Try a range extender or wireless repeater. I've had lousy luck with most installations, but a few do work. The trick is to put the store and forward repeater in a location where it can be "seen" only by the end points and the end points can't see each other. You may need to hide behind the fridge to make it work.

2. Switch to power line (HomePlug) networking AV2 (AV600/AV1200). Much depends on how much electrical noise you find on your AC power lines. If you initially experience dropouts and streaming stalls, it will get worse and you should try something else.

1. Last resort... run CAT5.

Good luck.

I ended up getting the the ASUS PCE AC68 with the external mount antennas. I now have a consistent 5 bars of strength and average 700 Mbs between the PC and router simply by putting the antenna mount on top of my desk. It's still going through 3 walls and a refrigerator. It will be interesting to see what happens when I rearrange the office and eliminate the refrigerator and one wall from the equation.

Thanks for everyones comments.

Bob

Congrats. I suspect that the 700 mbits/sec is not your measured throughput, but rather the connection speed. Most connection managers will show really impressive speeds, when they're not moving any traffic. I would be really impressed with the Asus router if it could do that through 3 walls. Try one of the benchmark test programs, such as iperf3 to see how you're really doing.

Jeff,

I suspect you are correct about that being the connection speed. Since my internet connection has a max rate of 200 Mbs, I would never expect to see an actual throughput anywhere close to that. I do have multiple devices on the network, but in general, never transfer anything between them.

I do have AT&T fiber to my exterior wall with GigaPower available, but since they want me to pay 50% more for them to supposedly not snoop on my traffic, I told them I wasn't interested.

Bob