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Wireless Networking Network Networking

D-Link Made a USB Adapter that Adds Wi-Fi 6 To Your Laptop (theverge.com) 38

Posted by msmash from the interesting-tacks dept.
D-Link is trying to make it simple to give your computer a Wi-Fi upgrade. From a report: The networking company has announced what it's calling an "industry-first" Wi-Fi 6 adapter built into a USB stick. Plug it into your laptop or desktop computer, and you may be able to get better performance than from your older Wi-Fi chip. The adapter advertises speeds up to 1,200Mbps. It's not entirely clear who the target audience is for this upgrade. You'll need to be connected to a Wi-Fi 6 router to get the biggest benefits, and most people still don't own one of those (the Wi-Fi 6 standard only started rolling out two years ago). And if the laptop or desktop you're using was bought any time in recent memory, chances are it supports Wi-Fi 5, which isn't a huge step down from Wi-Fi 6.
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D-Link Made a USB Adapter that Adds Wi-Fi 6 To Your Laptop More

D-Link Made a USB Adapter that Adds Wi-Fi 6 To Your Laptop

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  • D-Link re-invents Wifi Dongles 15 years too late... news at 11.

  • ...just like the 15 previous WIFI changes?
    Why would it be different now?

    • Yeah, not sure what is amazeballs about something that has happened many times and will continue to happen. It's a fucking wifi dongle.

      As for the target audience, largely morons.

      "Pfft, your laptop only has Wifi5? Check this baby out, I have wifi _6_! Can't wait to game on this baby!"
      "Uhh, you have a $90 D-star-link wifi router and a 100Mbps internet connection, Johnny, you dumb asshole."

      • It's a fucking wifi dongle.

        I would think that a Wi-Fi dongle that can also be used as a sex toy would be newsworthy.

      • As for the target audience, largely morons.

        Adding 1 wifi 5 device will mess up your wifi 6 bandwidth. So if you have an older laptop with wifi 5 then you can not use it on the wifi 6 network without serious disruption to other users. With a dongle, you no longer have to replace your old laptop - which might be brand new as wifi 5 is still more common then wifi 6. So this dongle will be a welcomed product for many users - specifically those who access a NAS device or those not limited by internet bandwidth.

  • Can I plug it into my phone?

    • Sure, but it won't work

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xonen ( 774419 )

        Likely mostly will depend on power demands, as usb OTG is usually not happy delivering high power, and how standard their drivers are. But in theory there's no reason for it not to work. In practice might require a branded phone, possibly rooted, but when stuff gets mainstream android happily support pretty much any device Linux kernel supports, next to the prop phone blobs.

    • If it's OTG compatible and drivers exist.

  • Why is another wifi dongle news? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Monday January 11, 2021 @04:29PM (#60928310)

    Users who don't know USB wifi adapters exist or to look for those supporting what they want are wildly unlikely to browse Slashdot.

    • Yes this. I'm usually against people shouting "OMG Slashvertisement" but in this case it is literally an incredibly obvious product by an obvious company that no one here is under any delusion that would be developed. This isn't news. You wanna post to Slashdot, make the WiFi 6 stick use the headphone and microphone port rather than USB.

  • Or another failed Slashdot attempt at journalism ?

  • The thing I most hate about dongles is how easily they seem to snap when most inconvenient. One of the worst was an ethernet adapter that had a pop out to plug the ethernet into from a PCMCIA card. Sometimes even shifting the cable would break the adapter.

    Also I have no real plans to replace my current router for some years to come. So no Wi-Fi 6...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      Being able to plug in 2 x 1.2gbps dongles (bonded network) to your laptop could potentially allow the end user to have a 2gbps connection between their laptop and file server, which is useful if you have an SSD-backed local NAS
       
      Having a 10gbps (again, bonded) connection from a laptop to a SSD-backed NAS would allow you to boot from network or just have access to a very large data array remotely

      • Or you could just use an ethernet cable. Wifi is absolute garbage for massive large file transfers. You're not going to get the advertised speeds unless your laptop and wifi ap are inside the same Faraday cage. The ISM bands are absolute garbage these days, especially in densely populated areas.

    • the usb bus may be slow then pci-e ethernet!

    • The thing I most hate about dongles is how easily they seem to snap when most inconvenient.

      Stop calling them dongles. They are levers.

      Like all levers they provide the mechanical advantage necessary to easily allow the user to accidentally crack the motherboard inside whatever device the lever is applied to.

    • I just had a Netgear WiFi dongle's drivers completely fuck Windows 7 until they were removed.

      The version of the drivers delivered by Microsoft on Netgear's behalf was merely bad. The NIC would stop working until you removed and reattached it, or rebooted.

      The latest version of the drivers was spectacularly shit. It actually prevented Windows from starting properly whether the NIC was attached or not.

      Perhaps the Windows 10 drivers actually work, no idea. But fuck Netgear sideways.

  • ... like USB port speeds. If you plug this into a non-USB 2.0/3.0 port, you're going to get the maximum speed of 1.5/12 Mbps. And of course, these are theoretical maxes!

    So, what good is a Wifi 6 adaptor on a legacy laptop if the old 1.1 USB ports are the bottleneck?

  • Congratulations! This failed, even atbeing a slashvetisement!

  • Why would you get a USB adapter when most laptops can easily have their interal WiFi adapter upgraded. Having something hanging off your machine for something that gets used as often as WiFi basically monopolizing a USB port, and a high speed one at that just seems like a bad solution to an easily fixed problem.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      There are always USB wifi adapters for various applications.

      D-Link has released a new model that happens to be Wifi-6.

      Now as to why you'd do this instead of replacing internal card, well one it's easier and two, some laptop vendors lock out aftermarket m.2 cards. However there are desktop builds that don't have wireless that may opt to add through USB anyway.

    • Whitelists (as the used to be called). Manufacturers who implement security minded SKUs will allow only certain devices (via BIOS). I personally had to install a community modified bios on my Lenovo X230 to remove such a list.

  • That's nothing (Score:3)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Monday January 11, 2021 @08:54PM (#60929974)

    I have one that adds a fan to my laptop.

  • Let me guess, yet another wifi adapter that that claims to be Linux compatible, and in small print you learn it is up to versions retired in 2001.
  • It took only a few minutes for me to upgrade my 'Legacy' 2016 model Lenovo laptop to WiFi-6 and BT 5.1 using a US$25 intel AX200 kit. It was just a matter of disconnecting the old WiFi card and installing the new one. The replaced M.2 card actually does connect at 2400 Mbps to my WiFi-6 router, though actual speeds are certainly slower. Other notebook PCs might be harder (or impossible to upgrade), but Lenovos are pretty easy to work on.

    Before you try this on your own machine, make sure you research any
  • What the fuck was the point of this garbage-ass post?

  • ..Cool. Now is there one I can plug into my current perfectly splendid router?

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