At UMass Amherst we use USB Dual band Adapters to help diagnose wireless issues for students on campus. If they only have a single band adapter we lend them a Linksys AE2500 dual band and see if that helps. I'm not sure on the actual numbers, but switching from a single band to a dual band adapter does solve a large number of problems for students.
We have also used Linksys WUSB600N adapters before and those also worked well. As long as the adapter is wi-fi certified and dual band it seems to work reasonably well here. From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Paul Walker Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2013 11:31 AM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Dual Band USB adapters Has anyone suggested to students that only have single-band wireless adapters to obtain a dual-band USB adapter for better performance (by driving them to the 5ghz band)? If so, have you seen adapters that you would not recommend in an enterprise environment? We have a Cisco wireless infrastructure and have been testing the Cisco/Linksys AE3000 and newer AE6000 USB adapters. No real feedback from students yet, but am looking for other viable options to recommend if they exist. Background: We have one residence hall that is half student housing and half HUD senior housing. We own the building, but can't take full occupancy until some date in the future (2018 maybe). Due to leasing agreements and such, we don't have students all on the same floors (students and seniors are intermixed on every floor). This building is all wireless and has about 7 APs per floor. We believe that due to the AP density and the possibility that there is personal wireless (in the senior housing apartments) in close proximity to our infrastructure, we could be dealing with a great deal of interference in the 2.4 Ghz band. Roughly 53% of all wireless devices on campus are running 802.11n on 2.4 Ghz. Almost every student that has called to complain about a poor wireless experience in this hall is using the 2.4 Ghz band. Hence the desire to provide options to our students with single-band adapters to purchase something that is a dual band. Thanks, Paul Walker Division Manager, Computer & Network Support | Information Systems Moody Bible Institute 820 N. LaSalle Blvd., Chicago, IL 60610 312-329-4392 www.moodyministries.net<http://www.moodyministries.net/> >From the Word. To Life. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
