Edimax 7833uac USB adapter, considerably better than 7822uac

[RussellInCincinnati]

With a 10-meters-away RT-AC68u (3-stream 802.11ac) router running 384.4 Merlin firmware, my Edimax 7833uac USB WiFi network adapter ($35 dollars or so) connects at 1.3 gigabits per second nominal link rate on a 5 gigahertz channel. Connection strength on Linux reads "100%." The older Edimax 7822uac adapter, same computer, links at 867Mbps (which it should) with connection strength "70%." This is with completely up-to-date Manjaro / Arch Linux kernel 4.14. The newer 7833uac is a 3-stream 802.11ac wifi adapter, the 7822 is a two-stream adapter.

Under Windows 10 the older '7822 connects occasionally, sometimes, after multiple tries. The 7833uac works great immediately.

Guess this could be that my 7822 adapter is now defective, but the Windows problems with it coincidentally did not appear with older Merlin/Asus firmware.

Moral of the story is if you have a 7822uac and are talking to a Merlin '68u router, give it to a friend and get the 7833uac.

 

[Internet Man]

Have you run some actual throughput tests using iperf?

 

[RussellInCincinnati]

Have you run some actual throughput tests using iperf?

Good idea. Have basically given up on the older adapter, under arch Linux and Windows it usually will not connect at 5ghz.

 

[sfx2000]

Good idea. Have basically given up on the older adapter, under arch Linux and Windows it usually will not connect at 5ghz.

The Realtek drivers for Linux have been a bit problematic for newer kernels - there was a change back in the 3.10 days where ioctl's moved around and broke their driver... there is a fork over on github that helps with newer kernels for all realtek 802.11ac chips

Under Windows 7/8/10 - the drivers there prefer 2.4GHz over 5GHz - that being said, some time invested in the advanced settings can make a big difference if one wants to spend that time.