131 of 150 people found the following review helpful

Limited Range - not good reception on a Linux box, May 14, 2013

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This review is from: Edimax EW-7811Un 150M 11n Wi-Fi USB Adapter, Nano Size Lets You Plug it and Forget it, Ideal for Raspberry Pi, Supports Windows, Mac OS, Linux (Personal Computers)

I purchased this to use it with a desktop in the upstairs bedroom directly avove the room in which the router is placed.. We recently switched our service provider to and the connection speed of 50 Mbps. My laptop connects without any problems when in upstairs bedroom with its built-in wifi and the speed I get is about 22 Mbps, when I take it downstairs in the same room as the router it jumps from 22 to 30Mbps, (45 Mbps via ethernet).

I tried the Edimax with my laptop which has no problem connecting when downstairs but in the bedroom it keeps loosing the signal intermittently. My laptop has Windows 7 installed.

I tried it with my second laptop which is an IBM Thinkpad with Ubuntu 12.04 installed. The speed I was getting downstairs was 12 Mbps which I thought was not bad but upstairs the speed dropped to barely 2 Mbps and sometimes no signal

I decided to return it and selected another adapter TP-Link TL-WN722N which worked like a charm on all my machines.

If you will be using the unit in the same room as the router be it Linux or Windows, this will work for you but if the router and the unit are at a distance, particularly on different floors you will have issues.

The main reason for poor performance could be attributed to the unit being very tiny and the built-in antenna is not powerful enough for it to work at a fair distance from router particularly if there are walls and floors in the way.

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Edimax EW-7811Un 150M 11n Wi-Fi USB Adapter, Nano Size Lets You Plug it and Forget it, Ideal for Raspberry Pi, Supports Windows, Mac OS, Linux B003MTTJOY Edimax Edimax EW-7811Un 150M 11n Wi-Fi USB Adapter, Nano Size Lets You Plug it and Forget it, Ideal for Raspberry Pi, Supports Windows, Mac OS, Linux Computers & Accessories Limited Range - not good reception on a Linux box I purchased this to use it with a desktop in the upstairs bedroom directly avove the room in which the router is placed.. We recently switched our service provider to and the connection speed of 50 Mbps. My laptop connects without any problems when in upstairs bedroom with its built-in wifi and the speed I get is about 22 Mbps, when I take it downstairs in the same room as the router it jumps from 22 to 30Mbps, (45 Mbps via ethernet).

I tried the Edimax with my laptop which has no problem connecting when downstairs but in the bedroom it keeps loosing the signal intermittently. My laptop has Windows 7 installed.

I tried it with my second laptop which is an IBM Thinkpad with Ubuntu 12.04 installed. The speed I was getting downstairs was 12 Mbps which I thought was not bad but upstairs the speed dropped to barely 2 Mbps and sometimes no signal

I decided to return it and selected another adapter TP-Link TL-WN722N which worked like a charm on all my machines.

If you will be using the unit in the same room as the router be it Linux or Windows, this will work for you but if the router and the unit are at a distance, particularly on different floors you will have issues.

The main reason for poor performance could be attributed to the unit being very tiny and the built-in antenna is not powerful enough for it to work at a fair distance from router particularly if there are walls and floors in the way. Anis Y. Jiwani May 14, 2013

Overall: 5

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Showing 1-10 of 10 posts in this discussion

Initial post: Jun 21, 2013 8:24:56 PM PDT

Amazon Customer says:

This was exactly my problem! I ordered this and it worked great for months on windows 8 but when I went to play around with Linux it could barely pickup signal from 20 feet away. Went back to windows and boom working perfect again.
I tried several Linux distros and they all had the same problem.

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7 of 8 people think this post adds to the discussion. Do you?

In reply to an earlier post on Jun 21, 2013 9:17:55 PM PDT

Anis Y. Jiwani says:

Ray,

Thank you for your feedback. Sorry to hear about your problem mirroring mine.

If you need something for your Linux distros try the one I got as the replacement, it is giving me excellent service which I also have posted a review of. Its TP-Link TL-WN722N.

Regards,

Anis

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Posted on Sep 27, 2013 1:42:24 AM PDT

David Rogers says:

So, it works, but you want/need a stronger signal. You DO realise this is a MICRO adapter, correct? To give it 2 stars because it IS what it IS (a MICRO adapter) and doesn't have an antenna attached for increased range only because your bedroom is far away from the router is missing the point of the product entirely.

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In reply to an earlier post on Oct 2, 2013 12:33:17 PM PDT

tony95 says:

David, they are complaining because if performs poorly on Linux versus Windows. Did you read the review comments? I use it on windows and it is great. I guess this adapter is not a good option for Linux users

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Posted on Nov 28, 2013 1:33:42 AM PST

W. Crawford says:

Using it with latest Ubuntu, but it has some kind of "Green" power management built in, and it shuts down every minute or so and you have to keep refreshing, reconnecting! Very irritating! This "Green" business goes too far sometimes to the extent where it becomes almost non-functional. It plugged in and was recognized instantly, unlike another adapter which is not seen by Ubuntu, but the constant shutting down and manual reconnecting makes it worthless almost. Have to try another adapter now.

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In reply to an earlier post on Nov 28, 2013 10:27:51 AM PST

Anis Y. Jiwani says:

Try the one I switched to and you should not have any issues.

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In reply to an earlier post on Feb 19, 2014 7:49:42 AM PST

Chris Dragon says:

The original review says "I tried the Edimax with my laptop which has no problem connecting when downstairs but in the bedroom it keeps loosing the signal intermittently. My laptop has Windows 7 installed." So he's complaining it performs poorly on Windows and Ubuntu. Only the first comment claims it performs well on Windows.

As for someone else saying it performs poorly because of green power management, that's also not true. This adapter performs poorly for me but a TP-Link performs well on the same system and both would use the same power management.

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Posted on Jul 1, 2014 6:35:04 PM PDT

Music_Blue says:

Its my understanding that the Bluetooth device does not communicate with the router, it communicates with the PC and other Bluetooth devices. Bluetooth is known not to have much distance between devices - they should both be in the same room or you might experience intermittant operation. Communication with the router is through the computer either wireless WiFi or wired ethernet.

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In reply to an earlier post on Jul 1, 2014 7:04:47 PM PDT

Chris Dragon says:

Music_Blue, this is a wifi usb dongle, not bluetooth. A decent wifi sender/receiver, especially 802.11n, can cover an average house.

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In reply to an earlier post on Oct 14, 2014 2:56:42 PM PDT

Nathan E. Johnson says:

With Linux, you need to do several things to get it working properly.

1) You need to disable any OS power management. on Debian based distros, this will be in /etc/network/interfaces , the following directive: wireless-power off

2) you need to disable any power management within the driver. for instance, in your /etc/modprobe.d/ directory you can create an 8192cu.conf file with the following entry:
options 8192cu rtw_power_mgnt=0

3) (optional) if you're not using any gui network manager tools, then from cli you need to use the wpa-roam mode to make sure that it will try to reconnect automatically if the connection drops.

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