Linksys AE1200 Wireless-N USB Adapter

I have an OLD Dell laptop. And due to some unfortunate home network pre-planning on my part, my main internet connection port, and subsequently, my wireless router, is not exactly in an optimal spot for good wifi distribution throughout my home. For a long time I blamed that bad router placement for my experiencing so many connection drops on the laptop whenever I’d visit any kind of graphics-heavy website or attempt to download a file of more than about a megabyte in size. I even had a hard time transferring files from other computers on my home network to the laptop without losing the connection in the middle of the transfer. It was extremely frustrating.

However I noticed that when my kids would come home with their newer, Windows Vista laptops, they had none of the same connection problems I did. So recently, I decided to upgrade the old laptop’s OS from Win XP to Windows 7, thinking that might help the router and laptop work together a little better. Heh. Just my luck, the laptop’s internal wifi adapter wasn’t supported by Win 7. So I did a little research and decided on the Linksys AE2500 Dual-Band Wireless-N USB Adapter, which I purchased through Amazon.

Wow.

The installation could not have been simpler and the performance has been amazing. Now I get a strong, fast connection from anywhere in my house, all via the same router with no change to its setup or location. The problem was the laptop’s old internal wifi adapter all the time!

I’m extremely satisfied with the Linksys AE2500 adapter. It’s fabulous and it just works! And at under $40 it’s a great deal as well.

My ONLY concern is for its seemingly flimsy construction, so I’d say that care should probably be taken that nothing touches or exerts any considerable downward pressure on the adapter body while it’s inserted into your laptop’s USB port. While I certainly haven’t tested its tensile strength, the thing seems as though it might snap off fairly easily.

But no other complaints! If you need a USB wifi adapter, this is a good one!

To get optimum performance out of a Dual-Band Wireless-N router, you need to get Dual-Band Wireless-N adapters. There are plenty of Wireless-N adapters out there, all of which brag about being up to the “latest standard” and offering “blazing fast” WiFi performance. However, if you have a Dual-Band router, you are throttling your maximum connection speed down to no more than 130 Mbps unless you spend a little more and get the right kind of WiFi adapters. The Linksys AE3000 will do the job very well for an excellent price.

Mine was out of the box, plugged in, installed and running in less than 5 minutes. I did not use the CD that came with the adapter. I downloaded the current driver software from the Linksys website and unzipped it on my hard drive. When I plugged in the adapter, I directed Windows to use these files to locate the appropriate driver. My system happens to have the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium installed, so I chose this driver package from the website.

The AE3000 initially connected on my D-Link DIR-825 router’s 2.4 GHz band at 130 Mbps, just like an ordinary Wireless-N adapter. I have the router configured such that the SSID is “invisible” for better security, and the adapter could not initially “see” the 5 GHz band. I logged on to my router and temporarily set the SSID for the 5 GHz band to “visible,” which allowed the AE3000 to spot it right away. When I connected this time – Wow! – I had a 300 Mbps connection. I tested file transfers between several systems on my home network and found dramatically improved speeds. This was exactly what I was looking for. (By the way, I didn’t forget to log back on to the router and reset my 5 GHz band SSID to “invisible.” This doesn’t provide perfect security by any measure, but every little bit helps against casual hackers.)

Don’t look for this adapter to necessarily improve your web-surfing experience. Your DSL or cable internet connection probably tops out at no more than 20 Mbps, so a connection to your router faster than Wireless-G speeds of 54 Mbps will most likely make no noticeable difference. The point here is to achieve faster connections between the devices on your home network. For instance, if you stream music and/or video files from a desktop system to a network-capable Blu-Ray player (as I do,) faster connection speeds will make a BIG positive difference.

You may have to experiment with the position of the adapter and/or the router’s antennas to obtain the highest quality signal strength. Even a slight twist in the angle of my router’s antenna provided a 10% improvement in signal quality on the 5 GHz band connection. I found that my connection speed stabilized at 300 Mbps when the signal quality remained at about 90%. (I have asked my wife to avoid dusting on or around my router for the foreseeable future!) Interestingly, I found the 2.4 MHz band connection to be much less sensitive in this same manner. I suppose this is because less data is being transmitted.) However, even when the signal strength dropped to 80%, my connection speed remained at about 270 Mbps, which still isn’t too bad.

The key point is to configure your dual-band router so that the 5 GHz band is activated, and to log your compatible adapter on to that band. The Linksys AE3000 adapter is an excellent, affordable choice that gets the job done. I highly recommend it!

Works well

Tengo un router Linksys (WRT 1900AC) y ,a pesar de ser la misma marca, no he tenido narices de hacer que funcione a 5 Ghz usando todas las prestaciones. La verdad es que me sorprende que Linksys saque un producto de tan baja calidad, no es comparable ni de cerca a la calidad de cualquiera de sus otros dispositivos de red.