Rainge of wireless routers

  • Thread starter Thread starter Desmond
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Desmond

Hi I am with AOL/Talk Talk. I have a wireless router Huawei Echolife HG521 and have just purchased on line a USB wireless dongal D-Link DWA-140 not arrived yet. I tried to ask AOL help desk for the range. They are in asia anddo not seem to know. One minute they say 30 feet the next minute they say 30 Meters. Can someone give a best guss for reliable and a maximum achevable please.

TIA

Desmond.
 
<<
Hi I am with AOL/Talk Talk. I have a wireless router Huawei Echolife HG521
and have just purchased on line a USB wireless dongal D-Link DWA-140 not
arrived yet. I tried to ask AOL help desk for the range. They are in asia
and do not seem to know. One minute they say 30 feet the next minute they
say 30 Meters. Can someone give a best guss for reliable and a maximum
achevable please.
The 802.11 specifications indicate range, viz. Wireless N should have
an appreciably longer range than Wireless G. Local conditions
(obstructions to RF frequencies between the two wireless stations)
are the factors most likely to limit range in home networks. Most
US manufacturers promise 30 to 100 meters range i.e. enough
for most home users. 30 feet = 10 m. is ridiculously small, which
implies your responders in Asia seldom need to consider max. range.
 
Hi I am with AOL/Talk Talk. I have a wireless router Huawei Echolife HG521
Desmond.
Click to expand...

It is as the other poster Don says, also it's less if you have reinforced concrete walls, as is common in Asia. You get a Faraday cage effect and your signal is attenuated, so 20-30 feet is more like it if you're behind a thick concrete wall and the router is on the other side.

RL
 
Desmond said:
Hi I am with AOL/Talk Talk. I have a wireless router Huawei Echolife HG521
and have just purchased on line a USB wireless dongal D-Link DWA-140 not arrived yet.
I tried to ask AOL help desk for the range. They are in asia and do not seem to know.
One minute they say 30 feet the next minute they say 30 Meters. Can someone give a
best guss for reliable and a maximum achevable please.

TIA

Desmond.
Click to expand...

As you get further away, the transfer rate drops.

Eventually, if you get far enough away, the thing can't stay connected
any longer.

The customer reviews here, for the DWA-140, span a large range
of dates. That implies there could be several different "revisions"
of the adapter, each with different chipsets. The different
revisions might not have identical characteristics. You may not be
able to use a review from 2009, to predict how the 2012 version works.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127244

With regard to your Huawei router, there aren't many reviews
here, but it's not looking good so far. At least it supports N.
But if the radio portion doesn't work well, the world's greatest
USB dongle isn't going to help. Both ends play a part in the
connection quality.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TalkTalk-wi...PTLI2Q/ref=cm_rdp_product/277-0320425-5698005

Paul
 
Hi I have read the review Paul posted at the bottom of his reply. I am having this difficulty. and the revews do not paint a pretty picture. I am confused with what two of you have said to get it working.

Taken from that last link .....

SlickRick
9/18/2010 9:42:47 PM
However after
reading several reviews here on Newegg, I went to the RaLink website and
downloaded the RT 2870 driver

How do I get that driver? AND

Brianod
8/30/2010 9:05:31 PMhis came with firmware 1.50 (rev B Adapter)
but Dlink says that's no good for Win 7 64. Had to go to
Dlink and download 1.60

I have searched for updated drivers.

I did find one claiming to do the job. DWA-140_B2_FW_v1.71s0062.zip
This has drivers for Vistax64, Vistax86, Win7x64, Win7x86, WinXPX64 ans WinXPx86_Win2K. plus a standard setup.exe.

I tried that and it made no diffrence.

D-Link do not apear to have an email support and the phone number is 10p ber minute.

Any help on this driver 1.60?

Desmond.
 
Sorry should have added a request to the above for a decent adaptor for
Windows 7/64

Desmond.
 
Desmond said:
Hi I have read the review Paul posted at the bottom of his reply. I am having this difficulty. and the revews do not paint a pretty picture. I am confused with what two of you have said to get it working.

Taken from that last link .....

SlickRick
9/18/2010 9:42:47 PM
However after
reading several reviews here on Newegg, I went to the RaLink website and
downloaded the RT 2870 driver

How do I get that driver? AND

Brianod
8/30/2010 9:05:31 PMhis came with firmware 1.50 (rev B Adapter)
but Dlink says that's no good for Win 7 64. Had to go to
Dlink and download 1.60

I have searched for updated drivers.

I did find one claiming to do the job. DWA-140_B2_FW_v1.71s0062.zip
This has drivers for Vistax64, Vistax86, Win7x64, Win7x86, WinXPX64 ans WinXPx86_Win2K. plus a standard setup.exe.

I tried that and it made no diffrence.

D-Link do not apear to have an email support and the phone number is 10p ber minute.

Any help on this driver 1.60?

Desmond.
Click to expand...

If I was doing this, the first thing I'd need to do, is verify it really
is based on an RT2870. As I indicated, the DWA-140 has existed for
several years, which is a long time for an adapter, and implies
there are several revisions. I would want to use my utilities to
tell what kind of chipset it is first.

This is an example of a link for Ralinktech. If you have a USB adapter,
that's the driver at the top of the list. Make sure the chip number
and the interface type are correct, before downloading.

http://www.ralinktech.com/en/04_support/support.php?sn=500

When I tried downloading, what I got was this 30,769,885 byte file.
It appears to be packed "Chinese style", not a good sign. Like
some of those webcam drivers I don't trust. I can't open this with
7ZIP, because they used a packer.

IS_AP_STA_RT2870_D-3.2.9.0_VA-3.2.9.0_W7-3.2.9.0_RU-4.1.7.0_AU-4.1.3.0_042412_1.5.19.0WP_Free.exe

This is the AV scan from a week ago. It's clean.

https://www.virustotal.com/file/d78...d93930250f503f7c5961f842577e27e2aba/analysis/

I use Virustotal sometimes, for the "Additional Information" tab.
This is what it shows for the download.

"TrID
DirectShow filter (45.2%)
Windows OCX File (27.7%)
Win32 Executable MS Visual C++ (generic) (8.4%)
UPX compressed Win32 Executable (6.8%) <---
Win32 EXE Yoda's Crypter (5.9%) <---

PEiD packer identifier
Armadillo v1.71" <---

So it's chock full of goodness.

Just for the record, a 30MB download is totally unnecessary for a
Wifi device. An NDIS style driver, would probably be a fraction of that.

If I check the unofficial list of USB entries, this is what is available
for your adapter. So the adapters are made with more than one chipset.
Because there are only unofficial lists for this sort of thing,
we can't be sure the list is complete. But at least this shows, more
than one chipset is used.

07d1 D-Link System
3c09 DWA-140 RangeBooster N Adapter(rev.B1) [Ralink RT2870]
3c0a DWA-140 RangeBooster N Adapter(rev.B2) [Ralink RT3072]

When the installer is running, these are some of the files it uses.
(I checked this in Ubuntu, using WINE.)

1168 2006-05-17 00:58 default.pal
86880 2010-12-31 10:07 devcon64.exe
83296 2010-12-31 10:04 devcon.exe
890 2011-03-14 15:20 DisplaybyHWID.ini
39 2012-04-24 17:45 FontData.ini
11311 2011-10-12 16:05 HWID.ini
102400 2011-01-20 20:44 InstAPI.dll
102832 2006-05-18 00:19 _IsRes.dll
208304 2007-04-05 14:37 isrt.dll
12288 2012-04-24 17:45 _ISUser.dll
4392 2011-03-31 10:24 License_JP.txt
3026 2011-03-31 10:22 License_SC.txt
3026 2011-03-31 10:24 License_TC.txt
6708 2011-03-31 10:40 License.txt
354870 2012-04-24 17:45 setup.inx
5632 2012-04-24 17:45 StringTable-0009-English.ips

The "devcon" (that's actually a Microsoft file) can be used to list
hardware in the computer, from the command line. That could be
what they're using to check the USB ID of the wifi adapter.
The "devcon64" is the 64 bit version, which is a bit harder
to locate (not available for immediate download from Microsoft,
has to be extracted from a CD sized download).

Before downloading the RalinkTech installer, you can get a copy
of "devcon" from here. Only the 32 bit version works. The IA64
version is not for your PC (it's for Itanium). (Maybe some
other utility could do this in a more friendly way.)

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q311272

From the command line, you place the devcon.exe file in the
current working directory, and use a command like this:

devcon hwids * > myhwids.txt

Then, open "myhwids.txt" file with a text editor. Now, the following
are all the entries listed for D-Link, in that RalinkTech download.
This list is extracted from "HWID.ini". Not all of these will be
your adapter, but this is to give some idea how many D-Link designs
use those two chipsets.

[RT2870]
DeviceID_7 =USB\VID_07D1&PID_3C09
DeviceID_37=USB\VID_07D1&PID_3C11
DeviceID_44=USB\VID_07D1&PID_3C13

[RT3070]
DeviceID_21=USB\VID_07D1&PID_3C0A
DeviceID_27=USB\VID_07D1&PID_3C0B
DeviceID_34=USB\VID_07D1&PID_3C0D
DeviceID_35=USB\VID_07D1&PID_3C0E
DeviceID_50=USB\VID_07D1&PID_3C0F
DeviceID_52=USB\VID_07D1&PID_3C15
DeviceID_71=USB\VID_07D1&PID_3C16
DeviceID_92=USB\VID_07D1&PID_3C17

The other thing to note there, is the Wifi adapter doesn't use an
RalinkTech ID number, it uses D-Link, meaning it's possible for
a Wifi adapter to be "disguised". I don't like this practice. Instead,
they should be using a SUBSYS number to identify the designs.

The driver install, includes a Ralink WLAN Utility, which is pictured here.

http://www.3dvelocity.com/reviews/asuswl167g/info/Asus WL-167G review1_files/image042.jpg

Anyway, that's the RalinkTech driver.

Have fun,
Paul
 
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