WLAN card speed tests.

[mobilenvidia]

Transferring a file (312,928,648 bytes) over WLAN, whose best.

I did a simple data transfer test to see which card came out on top.

A few surprises popped up along the way.

Gigabyte WI06 (AR5008)

2.4Ghz Download = 31secs = 9.45MB/s = 75.6Mbps (300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 31secs = 9.78MB/s = 78.3Mbps (300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Download = 56secs = 5.33MB/s = 42.6Mbps (300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 42secs = 7.11MB/s = 56.8Mbps (300Mbps)

5.0Ghz Download = 42secs = 7.11MB/s = 56.8Mbps (300Mbps)

5.0Ghz Upload = 31secs = 9.63MB/s = 77.0Mbps (300Mbps)

Driver 7.6.1.204 (modded v1.24)

This was the first WLAN I bought for my i9400 to update the i3945 that came with the machine.

The Atheros 5008 based card was the best at the time (or so I thought)

Gave me some early issues with the now Infamous NMI/Parity error.

Once i found a fix for this, the card did well.

Tests above are all round good, but nothing stands out.

Atheros has not Client utility in Vista so a big downer for me.

SparkLAN WPEA-124N (AR5008)

Driver 7.6.1.204 (modded v1.24)

2.4Ghz Download = 42secs = 7.11MB/s = 56.8Mbps (300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 82secs = 3.64MB/s = 29.1Mbps (300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Download = 28secs = 10.66MB/s = 85.3Mbps (300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 29secs = 10.29MB/s = 83.2Mbps (300Mbps)

5.0Ghz Download = 90secs = 3.32MB/s = 26.5Mbps (300Mbps)

5.0Ghz Upload = 43secs = 6.94MB/s = 55.5Mbps (300Mbps)

This was my first sample WLAN card I was send by OxfordTEC direct from SparkLAN in Taiwan.

This card has been very unreliable, I hope it's just the card that I have.

11n testing was very hard as it would hardly perform any file transfer (would have taken hours to complete test with 300Mbps connection)

Once I connected at 135Mbps (20Mhz channel width) the card behaved much better and performed more like it brother above.

Ofcourse with 135Mbps connection it would never reach it peak potential, as the above times show.

Like above no Client Utiltiy in Vista

Dell WLAN 1500 (BCM94322)

2.4Ghz Download = 25secs = 11.94MB/s = 95.5Mbps (80% of 135Mbps))

2.4Ghz Upload = 31secs = 9.53MB/s = 76.3Mbps 64% of 135Mbps)

2.4Ghz Download = 25secs = 11.94MB/S = 95.5Mbps (270Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 24secs = 12.43MB/s = 99.5Mbps (270Mbps)

5.0Ghz Download = 26secs = 11.47MB/s = 91.8Mbps

5.0Ghz Upload = 28secs = 10.66MB/s = 85.3Mbps

Driver 5.10.38.26

This card was the biggest surprise for me.

It's one of the first 11n WLAN cards released and it did rather well with both 2.4 and 5Ghz tests.

Would love to see how the newer versions of this card go.

Client utility is a little naff, as you cannot do much with it.

Intel 5300 Driver wouldn't start = No Result.

The card with the most potential with 3x3 antenna setup, but alas on both my i945 chipsets the driver wouldn't start in all the OS's I tried.

This test will need to wait till I get a newer Notebook to try it on.

Intel 3945

2.4Ghz Download 150secs = 1.99MB/s = 15.9Mbps (38% of 54Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload 118secs = 2.53MB/s = 20.2Mbps (43% of 54Mbps)

5.0Ghz Download

5.0Ghz Upload

Driver 12.1.0.14

Here goes not my original card (in my Wife Notebook) but a i3945 from a Toshiba A100

This card is a weird one, as it has 5Ghz channels 36-48(or possibly 64) disabled, so only the higher channels can be used.

But there are very few Wireless routers that broadcast the higher channels, rendering this cad pretty useless for 5Ghz testing.

My other i3945 card works with channels 36-64 and all the higher channels so no issue there.

But buyers beware there are channel locked devices out there, but then who would buy one today ?

Intels client utility is better than Broadcoms but doesn't compare to Ralinks, not much better than WZC

Intel 4965

2.4Ghz Download = 47secs = 6.35MB/s = 50.8Mbps (43% of 130Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 35secs = 8.53MB/s = 68.2Mbps (62% of 130Mbps)

2.4Ghz Download = 53secs = 5.63MB/s = 45Mbps (29% of 144mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 30secs = 9.95MB/s = 79.6Mbps (67% of 144Mbps

5Ghz Download = 29secs = 10.29MB/s = 82.3Mbps (27% of 300Mbps)

5Ghz Upload = 24secs = 12.43MB/s = 99.5Mbps (30% of 300Mbps)

Driver v12.4.0.11

Luckily for Intel they released a new driver and I found it over at Gigabyte (and now host at LaptopVideo2go.com)

This driver fixed the previous 5Ghz 11n connection problem, I was now able to do a proper 11n test :) also the 2.4Ghz download speed was dramatically improved.

I would recommend that folk use this driver as it fixes an Authentication issue that stopped the Card from connecting to router in 11n mode (20Mhz or 40Mhz) at least with my Marvell based Chipet set router.

The i4965 now is the fastest uploader in 5Ghz, ans 2nd equal in downloading, this is much more like it.

No excuse for the lack luster 2.4Ghz performance (most 11n routers are 2.4Ghz only) where Intel crippled the card with no channel bonding (40Mhz)

Gigabyte GN-WS30N (RT2860)

2.4Ghz Download = 31secs = 9.63MB/s = 77.0Mbps (27% of 300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 15secs = 19.90MB/s = 159.2Mbps (54% of 300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Download = 30secs (28% of 300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 26secs (38% of 270Mbps)

5.0Ghz Download Not Supported

5.0Ghz Upload Not Supported

This has been my favourite card especially when I only used 2.4Ghz, where the upload speed is simply phenominal, no card come remotely close to it.

The download speed is not the greatest, which is a little odd as it can upload so fast.

This card would be the ultimate if it only could do 5Ghz as well, but alas only has 2.4Ghz radio chip (2820)

Ralnk have an excellent Client Utility, that is not beaten by any vendor tested thus far.

I've used this card for some months now and cannot really fault it other than lack of 5Ghz support.

SparkLAN WPEA-110N (AR9001)

2.4Ghz Download = 30.4secs = 9.82MB/s = 78.5Mbps (300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 18.6secs = 16MB/s = 128.4Mbps (300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Download = 38secs = 7.85MB/s = 62.8Mbps (300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 32secs = 9.32MB/s = 74.6Mbps (300Mbps)

5.0Ghz Download = 29secs = 10.29MB/s = 82.3Mbps

5.0Ghz Upload = 28secs = 10.66MB/s = 85.3Mbps

Driver 7.6.1.204 (modded v1.24)

This card I looked forward to for sometime.

It's a vast improvement over the AR5008, it's very stable and no crashes.

To ge the most from the card you need the modded INF driver, gives it quite a range boost (not all cards), and enables quite a few useful features that make up for no Client uitilty

SparkLAN WUBR-505 USB (RT2870)

2.4Ghz Download = 41secs = 7.3MB/s = 58.2Mbps (300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 22secs = 13.47MB/s = 108.5Mbps (300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Download = 36secs = = 8.29MB/s = 66.3Mbps (300Mbps)

2.4Ghz Upload = 30secs = = 9.82MB/s = 78.5Mbps (300Mbps)

5.0Ghz Download = 31secs = 9.63MB/s = 77.0Mbps

5.0Ghz Upload = 28secs = 10.66MB/s = 85.3Mbps

This is a little Gem, one of the very few 2.4Ghz AND 5Ghz USB WLAN cards.

It works really well for it's tiny size, it does much better in 5Ghz band probably due to its short antenna's better suited to the shorter wavelength

Ralinks legendary Client Ultily also comes bundled with the official drivers

SparkLAN WMIR-215GN (RT2860)

2.4Ghz Download = 38secs = 7.85MB/s = 62.8Mbps

2.4Ghz Upload = 36secs = 8.29MB/s = 66.3Mbps

Tested on a System running WinXP.

Gear used to test the above:

Server - IBM Xserver 236

2x3.6Ghz Xeons (Hyper threading and EMT64)

8GB RAM

5x73GB 15,000RPM Drives RAID 5

2x36GB 15,000RPM RAID 0

1x1TB 7200RPM SATA 2 Drive.

256MB SCSI RAID controller

64MB SATA controller.

Dual 1Gbit LAN

Windows Server 2008 x64

There are no bottlenecks on the server to hold up the WLAN's max 300Mbps connection.

Notebook to test the WLAN cards:

Dell Inspiron 9400/E1705

2.16Ghz Core 2 Duo

4Gb RAM

320GB 5400RPM SATA HD

Windows 7 x64

MiniPCIe slot

Router used in test (colours used above):

DLink DIR-655

4x1Gbit LAN ports

1x1Gbit WAN port

11n @ 2.4Ghz max 300MBps

Router was 4m away from laptop sitting about 1.8m above the floor on a book case.

Security settings WAP2/AES

Buffalo WZR-AG300NH

4x1Gbit LAN Ports

1x1Gbit WAN port

11n @ 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz max 300Mbps

Router was 4m away from laptop sitting about 1.8m above the floor on a book case.

Security settings WAP2/AES

The tests were run as follows:

The driver for the WLAN was installed and any necessary adjustments made to connect to my Router.

A 300MB file was copied from the 1TB SATA drive on the file server via file sharing to the Dell Inspiron.

And then copied back again to get both download and upload speeds.

I did this 3 times to make sure that there was consistency, and took the last reading.

The server was connected to the Router @ 1Gbit/s to have no bottle necks feeding the 300Mbps router.

As soon as there was LAN activity once the copy was initiated the timer was started.

And as soon as the transfer connectivity stopped the timer was stopped.

I then worked out the data transfer rate by diving the size of file in bytes by 1024^2 diving the time taken.

This then gave me the MB/second, multiply by 8 and gives the Mb/sec.

2.4Ghz performance chart.

Click to see larger chart

5Ghz performance chart.

Click to see larger chart

If you are in the market for a new card I hope this was/is of use, and I'll let you draw your own conclusions on a purchasing decision.

A huge thanks to OxfordTEC for supplying the Gigabyte and SparkLAN devices to bring you these tests :)

Test revision history, for future updates:

Version 1.0, initial release.

Version 2.0, rewritten article with description of each device and how they tested, added 5Ghz tests

Version 2.1, added Intel 4965 card, added security used by routers for tests.

Version 2.2, i4965 5Ghz test added, reran 2.4Ghz test.

version 2.5, added Buffalo 2.4Ghz results

Version 2.51 added SparkLAN WUBR-505 USB 2.4Ghz Buffalo results

Version 2.52 added SparkLAN WPEA-110N 2.4Ghz results

[Guest Guest]

intel 3945 download is 3.0+-0.2mb/s

upload is close

[Ver Greeneyes]

So out of those, it looks like the SparkLAN WPEA-110N (AR9001) with modded inf does best; good performance in both 2.4 and 5GHz ranges.. Doesn't look too expensive either - might pick one up for my ASUS A8Js. Thanks for testing!

I've had it for a few months now, and not really had any issues with it.

If you need both 2.4 and 5Ghz then it's a good choice.

[mobilenvidia]

Updated i4965

[NighTalon]

These are interesting tests.

I find it interesting that Lenovo and Apple stuck with Atheros for quite some time. I upgraded an Intel 3945 for an AR5008 so that I'd have MacOS compatibility.

Although I suppose the most recent round of Macs uses the Broadcom 802.11n chipset, and Lenovo seems to be switching to Intel, likely for discount/marketing reasons.

I have had quite a good experience on Windows and Mac with the AR5008 (probably better in Mac) whereas with the latest Ath9k, I have connectivity issues with some routers in Linux. This may be because one of my antennas is shorted out: I screwed down my laptop case on one of the antennae accidentally and now I can see bare metal through the insulation.

Luckily with the Apple Airport update, MacOS also supports the Broadcom 802.11n chipset as an Airport as well. I may buy this chipset for a new netbook. I find it interesting that the chipsets with 3 antennas fare quite poorly in this test.

The 2860 requires a ghetto-looking utility on MacOS, and about 9 months ago I tried to get it working in Linux and it required compiling a driver. I imagine that's been fixed by now.

[mobilenvidia]

These are interesting tests.

I find it interesting that Lenovo and Apple stuck with Atheros for quite some time. I upgraded an Intel 3945 for an AR5008 so that I'd have MacOS compatibility.

Although I suppose the most recent round of Macs uses the Broadcom 802.11n chipset, and Lenovo seems to be switching to Intel, likely for discount/marketing reasons.

I have had quite a good experience on Windows and Mac with the AR5008 (probably better in Mac) whereas with the latest Ath9k, I have connectivity issues with some routers in Linux. This may be because one of my antennas is shorted out: I screwed down my laptop case on one of the antennae accidentally and now I can see bare metal through the insulation.

Luckily with the Apple Airport update, MacOS also supports the Broadcom 802.11n chipset as an Airport as well. I may buy this chipset for a new netbook. I find it interesting that the chipsets with 3 antennas fare quite poorly in this test.

The 2860 requires a ghetto-looking utility on MacOS, and about 9 months ago I tried to get it working in Linux and it required compiling a driver. I imagine that's been fixed by now.

Cheers for the info, I could only ever once get my AR5008 card to work with MacOS, was a real pain.

[NighTalon]

I just wanted to add that my AR5008X works better in MacOS than the AR5008 (the former seems to have a proper firmware loaded, one that is recognized by MacOS)

I wonder what the "X" means. Instead of covering both sides of the MiniPCI-E module with heat spreaders, they're now thinner and cover one and a half sides. I imagine the chipset was shrunk/done on a finer nanometer fab process. This likely means reduced heat and energy consumption.

I will update on how my Broadcom 5322 performs by comparison. (only 2 antennae)

I wish I could give a good assessment, but I live on a busy corner in New Haven with 40+ networks visable at the same time. Often the strongest one is not my own router.

Quick assessment:

I have no trouble connecting unless I overwhelm my router at home in NYC with BitTorrent. Good old WRT54G there. (Broadcom chips onboard) Thick walls help isolate other signals, and I have never tested speed since usually I'm just maxing out my broadband connection.

At the beach (Long Island) we quite simply have a flaky router that cuts out after a while. Thin walls, and only one other network visible. (WGT624 which had replaced a more reliable but slower Linksys BEFW11) Large transfers kill it, requiring a reboot. I'm pretty sure they're Atheros chips on board, perhaps 5006/7EG, and I'm pretty sure the router is close to death. It never was that reliable.

Here at school in my New Haven apartment, we started out with a D-Link DIR-655, but I managed to botch the setup. Not everyone had the latest OS updates/drivers (PC and Mac) so my flat-mates got pissed when I set it to WPA2 only to avoid latency and some people couldn't connect. WEP was equally unreliable. I tried to set the channel properly, but the router still crashed quite a lot. The same was true with the auto-channel-setting option.

One of my flat-mates then bought a Netgear WNDR3300 which is as cheap as you can get for dual-band. The guy who sold it to him said it would serve both floors of the flat well enough. It did not. My Atheros cards dropped quite a lot, and still do, and even an Intel 3945 had some trouble.

I then put in a D-Link DIR-615 (cheapest 2.4 GHz 802.11n) and linked it via ethernet out the window to the WNDR3300. This works pretty well. Vista likes the DIR-615 best, and Mac and Lin prefer the WNDR3300 to connect to. 5 GHz from the WNDR3300 doesn't reach my room but 2.4 GHz does.

Conclusion:

If you try to run Mac, Atheros and Broadcom are your only options. I used a Ralink several years ago, but I think it was a defective chip. They're usually pretty good, although driver support in the past was iffy on Linux, though open-source. Ralink on MacOS is just a pain and looks awful. They're designed in Taiwan for what it's worth.

Airgo was bought by Qualcomm, so if you have WIFI on a cell phone with a Qualcomm radio set, you're using their chipset. They bought Airgo, but Airgo, despite its speed, isn't compatible with much else.

Atheros and Broadcom have cooperated on inter-operability among the 802.11n draft specifications. I think Atheros was the first with 802.11n Draft 2.0 support. Apple seems to be switching to Broadcom; Lenovo to Intel; HP also to Broadcom.

Toshiba still seems to like Atheros.

Atheros is based in California and does only WIFI (like Ralink) and releases new drivers very often. Intel does too, I guess. Broadcom and Ralink not so much.

I may switch everything back over to Broadcom from Atheros, although I do like D-Link routers which tend to use Atheros chipsets.

It's nice that the Atheros driver is now open source for Linux. Broadcom still requires "binary blobs". And less frequent updates for Windows.

As for routers, dual-band seems to be the way to go, assuming you can afford one. Note that the WNDR3300 will not do simultaneous 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz since it only has one NIC inside, unlike the models that cost 50 USD more. I don't know how it operates exactly.

Reality: it's all too complicated and probably a toss up. Atheros isn't necessarily top-of-the-line as people used to think. I wonder if that's because it doesn't handle crosstalk/interference as well as the competition, and that only became noticable as WIFI became more prevalent.

[RamGuy]

Wow, that Broadcom card just keep surprising! But what's the point with 5.0GHz again? Looking at these numbers the 2.4GHz download speeds are superior the 2.4GHz download speed with EVERY card? Little sad that the Intel WiFi 5300 didn't work, as I was looking forward to that one considering the older 3945 doing it so well!

Isn't the point with 5.0GHz to provide better, more stable and reliable wireless performance? How that is possible considering the 5.0GHz range being worse, along with the speeds supposedly being worse as well compared to 2.4GHz? What's the point with 5.0GHz then?

Edited May 2, 2009 by RamGuy

[mobilenvidia]

Wow, that Broadcom card just keep surprising! But what's the point with 5.0GHz again? Looking at these numbers the 2.4GHz download speeds are superior the 2.4GHz download speed with EVERY card? Little sad that the Intel WiFi 5300 didn't work, as I was looking forward to that one considering the older 3945 doing it so well!

Isn't the point with 5.0GHz to provide better, more stable and reliable wireless performance? How that is possible considering the 5.0GHz range being worse, along with the speeds supposedly being worse as well compared to 2.4GHz? What's the point with 5.0GHz then?

5Ghz is used where 2.4Ghz might be congested.

In a high rise building 2.4Ghz will probably be using up every channel (there are only 3 non over lapping channels)

5Ghz is less used and has 12 non overlapping channels.

BUT 5Ghz uses a shorter wave length and hence does not have the range of 2.4Ghz.

The speeds will vary with routers etc, only an indication but 2.4Ghz does seem to be faster than 5Ghz.

but i have no neighbours close by with WIFI so no congestion for me @ 2.4Ghz

[NighTalon]

I wanted to ask a few follow-up questions:

We may have no way of knowing this, but it would be interesting to figure out which revisions of the 802.11n standard each chipset supports with the latest drivers.

Also, statistics such as 3x3:3 for each chipset; by that I mean number of transmit antennae, receive antennae, and data streams.

Also, does anyone know if it's possible to find the Broadcom 5322 chipset with 3 antennae anywhere? It seems even the new Macs use it with just 2 antennae where as the older Atheros cards had 3 antennae on the Macs.

It seems the 802.11n working group is now on Draft 9 of the spec, according to Wikipedia.

I remember it was a big deal when Atheros released Draft 2 drivers.

A few notes:

Marvell chipset is called "TopDog" (I don't know if this is just for routers or also for client adapters; replaces the 802.11g Libertas chipset, incidentally now used in OLPC 1.5)

Broadcom chipset is called "IntensiFi"

Atheros chipset is called "XPAN"

Let's pretend that Airgo, Texas Instruments, Realtek, and Orinoco don't make WIFI chips anymore. I could be wrong, but I haven't seen them around.

Remaining players:

Marvell (routers only?), Atheros, Intel (clients only?), Ralink (clients only?), Broadcom

I don't think the Intel chipsets have publicly available names, although I'm sure they have cool codenames, which one could find in the Intel roadmap presentations.

RaLink is just too cool for school.

[NighTalon]

Since I'm procrastinating on writing a paper, I'll also make a quick commentary on router selection.

2.4 GHz only 802.11n:

I think the undisputed champion is the D-Link DIR-655 if you're set with only operating on the 2.4 GHz spectrum. That means you only have one or two other 2.4 GHz neighbors visible. Then you can use a whole independent channel; 1, 6, or 11 and be uninterrupted. I'm not sure how that works when you ad 40 MHz channels; you may want only one other device so that you can use that channel bonding feature to its greatest extent. Within the next year there will be 3x transmit simultaneous clients and servers so you can have 450 MBps. I guess you might want to wait, but that holds for dual-band routers, too.

I'm not a D-Link representative; I just like that D-Links still allow the use of external antennae, and this model is relatively inexpensive while also having Gigabit ethernet ports. It also rocks the charts at Small Net Builder.

One issue you may face with 2.4 GHz only, other than neighbors, are cordless phones. We upgraded all ours for this very reason since it was cheaper than dual-band simultaneous routers, and I don't think they were even out at the time. You may also encounter microwave interference and garage door remote interference.

The DIR-655 also has lots of firmware updates. I think D-Link is proud of the unit.

2.4 GHz and 5 GHz simultaneous 802.11n:

I recommend simultaneous because a) you may want to relegate legacy products to one channel to avoid slowdowns and :) chances are you have a cell phone or iPod or PMP or God-knows-what-else that doesn't support 5 GHz. What's the point of a dual-band router if those devices push you back to 2.4 GHz? I think only new BlackBerries support 5 GHz at the moment.

Anyway, the D-Link DIR-855 is the ultimate option. It rocks the speed tests on Small Net Builder, but it costs $280 thanks to its OLED display. So obnoxious. If you've got the cash, go for it, but I don't think firmware is being actively developed.

The better option is the D-Link DIR-825 since it is actively developed, but it only has two antennae! Annoying. They're big, but I don't think that does much. I don't know if one could solder in the pigtail for a third antenna. That would be so sweet, since this unit is much cheaper at $140.

We'll ignore Netgear since they don't seem to have any good consumer products that are simultaneous dual-band. Their WNDR3300 should work well if you're 5 GHz-only. Ditto for the Linksys WRT320N.

If you don't care about external antennae, the Linksys WRT 610N seems to be the ultimate option. Since it has loads of internal antennae, you might be able to throw on some pigtails. That's nice because it's dual-band and only costs $140.

The obvious outlier here is Apple's Airport Extreme dual-band simultaneous version. I can't find out what chipset it uses; I'd guess Broadcom, but I'd avoid it since even if config is easy and throughput is good, Apple stuff is very closed and proprietary so adding DD-WRT at a future date is quite unlikely. All prior versions used AR5008 chipsets.

If you can find a cheap clone (Trendnet/Rosewill) of any of the above products, go for it! Let me know if I left anything out. I guess there's Belkin, but I have a bad history with them, and they're not covered too well on Small Net Builder. Maybe the N1 Vision is OK, but it's out of stock and has a display. What a waste of money.

I haven't covered non-gigabit models, because I think if you're doing 802.11n and trying to get full bandwidth you want it. Also, on the wired front, you can utilize that on anything but a netbook these days.

Another option is to go the non-simultaneous route and add on a Gaming adapter later as Small Net Builder recommends. I'd rather not have another router to configure and a second wall-wart. That's just me.

Now I think I'll look into modding the Linksys and further procrastinate on my paper! Bye.

Update:

The D-Link 825 and the Linksys 610 both look ideal for hacking. I'd choose the D-Link since it has better performance. On both, the N-type connectors are available on the cards. I'm assuming they'd be used if the antennae were connected. No guarantees of course. I think that's handled by the WIFI chipset firmware.

Note that you should probably try to get the Atheros 92xx chipset instead of the 5008 if you can. The 855 definitely has this, and I'd bet the newer revisions of the 825 do as well. Also, the Linksys would be harder to hack with the third antenna since you actually have 6 connectors and no place to mount the antenna.

As for the off-brands, my experience and Newegg reveal ZyXel, Trendnet, and Edimax to be the options. I'm getting sleepy so it's hard to figure out which products actually support what, but all of these vendors seem to have Gigabit, 3 antennae, and dual-band. The kicker is simultaneous, and I'd bet they don't, since they're off brand, cost $80, and also probably don't have regular firmware updates. Edimax seems not to be dual-band, I think trendnet would say if it were simultaneous, and Zyxel doesn't look to be dual-band.

Edited May 7, 2009 by NighTalon

[Guest Gavin]

Can you do a range/performance comparison? Once card may scream at 10 feet, but suck at 30, where compared to the first, another card may do okay at 10 feet, but scream at 30. Make sense? Would this be possible?

[theoak]

Did you ever get an Intel 5300 to work in your E1705? I have an E1705 and was thinking of going N ... trying to pick the best wireless card accordingly. Let me know ... thanks.