upgrading wifi

When, after almost 2 years, I finally created a workstation for myself downstairs at a proper work table, I also moved my gaming computer from that area to my bedroom upstairs. I switched from wired ethernet to wifi. The wifi, however, started failing me almost immediately at the gaming computer alone. Bandwidth was horrible, then my first wifi network stopped connecting at this computer, then the second wifi network started failing too. The wifi was fine on my phone and Chromecast. It was the antenna at my old tower computer that was bad.

I went searching through records, and I originally ordered this wifi adapter (TP-LINK TL-WN881ND 300Mbps) back in 2016. Okay, fair enough. That's a long time for a wifi device to keep working. So, I ordered this wifi adapter (TP-LINK Archer TX55E AX3000) to replace it. It arrived today, and I put it in my gaming computer after work.

My original wifi immediately connected, and bandwidth score went from about 3.5 Mbps download to this very nice 273 Mbps download. Let's just call it a round 100X improvement (it's more like 78X) and move on. :)

The days of monkeying with Linux drivers are past us, for the most part. I plugged this PCI card in, and it just worked.