For those looking for AC1200 USB3.0 wifi adapters

[VirtualLarry]

I have obtained several Rosewill AC1200UBE adapters, and they work pretty decently, although, I had to reboot once, when the wifi driver couldn't find any networks anymore.

I have also obtained several PremierTek PT-8812AU adapters as well.

I am using the Edimax drivers (for their AC1200 wifi that looks just like the Rosewill, with the flip-up antenna, except in white instead of black) for both of them.

The Edimax drivers appear to just be the RealTek drivers, with Edimax branding, but they are apparently generic enough to work with other RealTek AC1200 USB adapters.

There are Linux drivers available as well. A friend is using them with the PremierTek adapter, and I brough a Rosewill adapter over the other day, and plugged it in, and it fired right up.

I also, today, removed the Rosewill adapter from one of my machines, and plugged in the PremierTek, and everything just worked.

So they are pretty-much inter-changeable, thankfully.

 

[Engineer]

Larry, have you done any speed tests (iPerf, simple PC to PC file transfers, etc.) to test these?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I haven't tested the PremierTek other than on speedtest.net, but I got 30/28, which is basically the limit of my internet connection (FIOS 25/25).

When I was using the Rosewill AC1200 adapters, they would show a link speed of 867Mb/sec in an adjacent room to a Netgear R6100 router. Unfortunately, it had 10/100 wired ports and not Gigabit. I could max out the connection at 11-12MB/sec to my NAS(es), and internet speed tests were also 30/28.

Edit: The Netgear's 5Ghz radio died in record time, though, so I returned it.

I have an Engenius ESR1200 with gigabit ports coming in a few days. Will update when that arrives.

Edit: Currently using a Buffalo WHR-600D (it was cheap) dual-band N600 router with a beta DD-WRT. It won't allow 40Mhz channels on 5Ghz, otherwise it loses the 5Ghz radio altogether and you have to reset it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm, I just installed my EnGenius ESR1200 AC1200 router. I did not upgrade to the newest firmware yet.

I couldn't see the 5Ghz signal on my dual-band N laptop, for some reason.

However, the PC in the living room with the Rosewill AC1200UBE could see it.

However, I connected with the Rosewill, did a speedtest, and saw 29/28, not 30/28.

I tried transferring a DVD ISO from my NAS, and it was going at like 3.5-4MB/sec. Kind of slow. (Slower than with my R6100.)

I went to Task Manager, to look at my wireless connection speed (link rate), and it was 6Mbit.

So I unplugged the Rosewill AC1200UBE, and plugged in another PremierTek PT-8812AU adapter. I immediately got connect rates of between 867-585Mbit/sec (fluctuating).

I did another speedtest.net test, and I got 30/28.

I tried transferring another DVD ISO from my NAS, and I was getting 21MB/sec. Very respectable. (Edit: This is with the PT-8812AU adapter plugged into a USB2.0 port on the PC, since this PC doesn't have any USB3.0 ports. So the limitation could very well be the USB2.0 port throughput here.)

I then tried transferring a second DVD ISO at the same time. I was getting 10MB/sec, but the first trended downward to end at 13MB/sec.

So it looks like 21-22MB/sec is my max wifi LAN speed. What that translates into Mbit/sec I'm not sure, but I think it's north of 200Mbit. Pretty decent, I think.

So far, I'm happy (although not with the Rosewill adapters, apparently they are built cheap.)

The PremierTek PT-8812AU adapters I had a friend get off of ebay, from "PremierTek_com" for less than $20 shipped, which I assume is officially PremierTek's ebay store. Off PremierTek's web site, you can order them for like $37.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Ok, tried one of the PremierTek AC1200 USB3.0 adapters on my Bay Trail N2830 laptop. It has a native USB3.0 port. So speeds should be better than my desktop with only USB2.0 ports, right? WRONG.

I'm on Skype right now, but with only Skype running (and Waterfox, idling), I get 40% CPU usage at 1.49Ghz.

With my NAS transferring over the AC1200 wifi at 10-14MB/sec, my CPU is totally maxed, 100% at 2.39Ghz.

Sad to see this laptop bottle-necked so hard due to AC1200 wifi, on the CPU. Who would have thought that it would take 60% CPU time to transfer files over wifi, at only 14MB/sec.

Edit: Without Skype running, but with internet radio in the background (Waterfox 32.0.3 and Flash Player), file copies from NAS get as high as 17MB/sec, and Task Manager shows 160Mbit/sec recieve rate. CPU usage is 75% or so, at 2.39Ghz. So it's not entirely a CPU limitation, it seems. I'm not sure where to find the link rate, that Win7 used to show in the Networking tab in Task Manager. The Win8.1 seems to omit that, instead, simply showing the bars of signal strength.

Edit: I was able to find the link rate, by right-clicking on the network details, and selecting something for more details. Link rate 585Mbit/sec.

Unfortunately, the internet radio has buffered several times now. Oops, did it again. Don't quite know why, if the NAS wifi transfer is overwhelming it, or what. I didn't have that problem with my desktop with this same model wifi adapter and same router.

Edit: I decided to use the PremierTek to connect to the 2.4Ghz N signal. I'm getting a link rate of 300Mbit/sec, and I'm getting NAS wifi transfer rates of 14-15MB/sec. So almost as much as I was getting with AC. CPU usage was around 70-75% as well.