Best, highest powered miniPCI wifi card?

[aaron7]

Ok, it's 2012. MiniPCI is definitely dead. No major technological advancements ahead I'm sure.

That said, there must be a hands-down best wifi card by now. 600mW this, engenius/broadcom/intel that... so much info and most threads are 5 years old now.

What has the best range? Fastest connection? I'll be running it paired with an external antenna.

So... recommendations?

 

[john-b691]

Not sure what you mean no technological advancement. The race is just about to take off again. 802.11ac is a year away from being finalized and there is already pre-ac stuff on the market.

It depends on your needs. Sure 2.4 band running N is fairly old. Almost all the newer cards run 3x3 mimo with dual band capability. Problem is you must have the correct antenna combination to run with the card. Most minipci cards are used in laptops. This means you are stuck with whatever antennas they have. For desktop units there are full size cards that have the antenna connectors.

You pretty much only have a couple of chipsets, intel and atheros and you will not see a lot of difference between them.

Be very careful about radio power. If you use a 600mw radio you are very limited on antenna. You cannot even use a 3db gain antenna and be legal. Now this may or may not matter some chipset can detect the antenna gain and reduce the power but it is hard to say. The problem with using a big radio and a small antenna is you can transmit real well but will have issues receiving. This is a very difficult trade off but it is the common reason many things use 200mw radio with a 7db gain antenna.