Difference between revisions of "Alfa AWUS036H 500mW USB WiFi Adapter"

Revision as of 11:28, 20 February 2008

This is a USB device that supports all major operating systems including, but not limited to Vista, Linux, and Mac.

Link to product from manufacturer web site

• http://dplanet.biz/alfa.com/product_info.php?products_id=377

TRC Rating:

Review:

While most WiFi adapters range from 80mW to 200mW, this one is capable of 500mW without add-on amplification.

Our tests show that with the default drivers included, the device is capable of picking up more distant WiFi networks, however, is not good at connecting to not so distant networks when compared to the internal adapter of a Compaq laptop.

Technical Summary:

• Compatible with wireless 802.11G & 802.11B access points/networks. USB 2.0/1.1

• Enables any laptop or desktop PC with a USB port, to access a wireless/WiFi network

• Antenna jack/connector. Attach a high gain antenna for long distance networking: The RP-SMA (female) connector offers many advantages by virtue of being a threaded connector, about 5x larger than the tiny connectors on PCMCIA cards:

• Threaded connector has much, much higher resiliency against wear, thus preserving the integrity of the connector, thereby preventing signal loss from degradation. Read more about this.

• Extension cable can be added or removed, as needed.

• Also comes with small 2dBi omni antenna for everyday use

This wireless adapter's 500mW Tx/Rx power compared to Tx/Rx power of popular wireless card models:

• 20x the Tx/Rx power of LinkSys WPC11, which has 25mW

• 2.5x the Tx/Rx power of Senao's 200mW (most popular Senao card)

• 1.67x the Tx/Rx power of the two most powerful PCMCIA wireless cards: Zcomax 300mW & Ubiquiti 300mW

Capable of WEP 64-bit, 128-bit, and 256-bit; WPA, WPA2. If you have an internal wireless card: You can use this USB 500mW adapter by disabling your internal card (in Device Manager).

WiFi Hacking:

Apparently the big attraction with this card is that it is a favorite among WiFi hackers. The driver CD that comes with the card contains very buggy XP drivers. It seems that updates are in order, and with 3rd party software this little USB WiFi radio has some extended capabilities.

The Alfa AWUS036H is a very popular card for use with the Aircrack-ng suite. Cards containing the Realtek RTL8187L chipset work quite well and is recommended. The driver patch for this chipset has been continuously improved and quite good at this point in time. Aircrack-ng is an 802.11 WEP and WPA-PSK keys cracking program that can recover keys once enough data packets have been captured.

Misc Notes:

• Plus it is just set to 500mw as soon as you plug in the 2nd usb on that dual cable

http://forums.remote-exploit.org/showthread.php?t=6466

• What's the average arp injection rate
• Make sure you are using the version 3 patch
• the aircrack-ng patch
• the main reason why people failed to authenticate with an AP is that they are not injecting

http://tinyshell.be/aircrackng/forum/index.php?topic=1718.msg9165