How useful is a wireless adapter card?
I just recently built my first PC, and didnt realize the card was necesarry to connect to wi-fi based internet, and since i use ethernet, its not really an issues for me, but what else can it do?
Is it worth me using one of my expansion slots to support it? are there any wireless devices this day and age that are must haves?
If you use Ethernet then there's no real reason to have one unless you want to use a Wi-Fi radio to sync files across devices or use your PC as a wireless access point or something.
I have one in mine simply because I don't want Ethernet cables littering the floor of our apartment and the Cable hookup was in another room.
>How useful is a wireless adapter card?
Useful if you need wifi
>didnt realize the card was necesarry to connect to wi-fi based internet,
How else would you do it?
> and since i use ethernet, its not really an issues for me, but what else can it do?
I really don't understand OP. It connects to wifi APs. Do you need one? Sounds like you don't.
>Is it worth me using one of my expansion slots to support it?
You tell me. You're already plugged in via Ethernet, do you move your computer around and need a wifi connection on occasion?
We can't tell you if its useful for you OP, only you know how you use your computer and where you use it.
Wifi is no bluetooth, it ONLY connects to access points for a internet connection.
>How else would you do it?
Built-in wifi on the motherboard
Lan parties - WiFi may be useful
Are you connected or not? Wifi is local, so from your router to a laptop or cellphone.
Cable is better
Thats under the assumption you have Wifi built in to your motherboard.
You can do it with a USB dongle as well.
But thats not really the discussion, the topic is DOES he need wifi.
I get that, but my question is more like, what devices in this day and age are wifi acess only? Like, what would i need to sync to my PC? I only have one ethernet port, so I cant hook anything else like a printer without a dongle.
You're confused how Ethernet and Wifi are and their purpose.
You don't connect devices direct to your PC with Ethernet or Wifi, you connect both your PC and the other device, lets say a printer, to your router and they can communicate with each other through the router.
wait so connecting a printer directly to my PC via ethernet wont do anything?
Wifi should actually be called IEEE 802.11
Nope.
You need to connect networked devices to a router or a switch for them to communicate with one another.
Besides, most everything connects via USB anyways, be it your phone, mouse, keyboard, printer, DAC, etc, etc, etc.
I had one and it was sorta shitty. I got a usb one and it was great. The transfer speed of USB is greater than the wifi speed, so it isn't a bottleneck like you might imagine. A USB cable can get it into a better position
Didn't work.
.........I don't understand what you're trying to communicate.
One of the reasons why i use wifi is because of "AP isolation" setting in the router which it doesn't work of course for ethernet devices.
Anyway if you don't want to have cables but still need "reliable" connection you can use powerline adapter, they work quite fine.
You said and I quote, "You need to connect networked devices to a router or a switch for them to communicate with one another." Well I tried the switch and it failed. whats not to get?
It will work but feels like a complete waste of an Ethernet port
Ah. I see.
Only if it's a x-over cable or one of the two ports are duel identity otherwise it will fail electrically. This is also amusing that the printer can/will self assign a 169. address with the lack of a presence of a DHCP server.
sure i'll just tell my 60 year old parents to let me use their IEEE 802.11 instead of a ubiquitous word that means the same thing now
I keked. Thank you, based basedboy.
MDI-X has been around for at least a decade and part of the gigabit standard. You do not need a crossover cable
You're not wrong, but the standard only works when the NIC is in 1000Tx mode, and many MANY devices that are driven by SBCs or embeded chips (cheap consumer printers are a good example) are still 10/100FD. Since your NIC would have to drop to 10/100 it woulnd't be able to do the duel identity that rolls along with the Gigabit standard.
Thats not to say it won't work, I don't doubt that plenty of vendors bend the rules for additional functionality, but if its designed strictly to the standard, you will still need a x-over cable. Its dumb, I know, but thats legacy support for ya.
Good thread
you could make it work, but it might be a pain in the ass. why not connect directly with usb instead?
holy shit, another fucking retarded boomer who still thinks crossover cables are a thing
kill yourself, you parkinsonian sicilian monkey
Read Fucking zoomers flying off the handle when they're too young and stupid to even know that they're stupid.
If you want the option to use wifi instead of ethernet just buy a USB wifi adapter. They're cheap and they can be very handy at times.
I mainly use mine when doing a fresh Windows install. The onboard LAN on my mobo doesn't work with Windows supplied drivers, so on a fresh install I can't connect via ethernet until I manually install the LAN drivers. My USB wifi adapter however works with Windows supplied drivers, so I can just pop it in and download drivers for my mobo. You can always get around that by using a driver CD or USB drive to copy files from another PC, but the wifi adapter method is quicker and easier.
I've also used it to troubleshoot ethernet problems a couple times. When I've thought I might have an ethernet hardware or cable issue I've popped in the USB wifi adapter to verify whether it was a hardware/ethernet issue or something else.
>You can always get around that by using a driver CD or USB drive to copy files from another PC, but the wifi adapter method is quicker and easier.
Most usb wifi adaptors have an inbuilt cd partition with drivres on them (depending on age and quality I guess - every tplink I've used has).
Gud suggestion nontheless