Rosewill RNX-MiniN2 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0 wireless adapter

The test drive….

TP-LINK TL-WN722N – this unit has an external Hi-Gain antenna with it, and is rated at 150Mbps
Patriot – 802.11N USB wireless adaptor
Centrino AdvancedN6200AGN – integrated wireless NIC inside the laptop

The actual adapter is sold in a blister pack style packaging.  

 

With specs printed on the back:

The grey text on a black background with a glossy blister pack plastic made the backside difficult to read. So, for the rest of us with not so good eyes, here is a summary of the product specs, in easier to read text:

Spec
Standards	IEEE 802.11b/g/n
Wireless Data Rates	Up to 300Mbps
Security	WEP 64/128, WPA, WPA2, IEEE 802.1x
WPA/WPA2	WPA2
Interface	USB 2.0
Frequency Band	2.4GHz – 2.484GHz
Channels	11 Channels (US, Canada) 13 Channels (Europe)
LEDs	Link/Activity (Blue)
Transmitted Power	802.11b 17±1dBm 802.11G 13±1dBm 802.11n 12±1dBm
Antenna	PIFA Antenna 2×2
System Requirements	Windows XP (32/64 bit), Vista (32/64 bit), 7 (32/64 bit); Linux Kernel 2.6.x, Mac OS 10.4, 10.5, 10.6
Dimensions	1.35″ x 0.66″ x 0.31″
Temperature	Operating: 0°C – 40°C (32°F – 104°F) Storage: -20°C ~60°C (-4°F ~140°F)
Humidity	10% – 90% (Non-Condensing)

Something that I liked on their website that I appreciated was this little tidbit of info:
“* The IEEE 802.11n Draft prohibits using High Throughput with WEP or TKIP as the unicast cipher. If you use these encryption methods (e.g. WEP, WPA-TKIP), your data rate will drop to 54 Mbps. Rosewill recommend setting your router’s wireless encryption as WPA-AES or WPA2-AES or update the latest firmware, in order to keep your wireless transfer rate at N speed.”

So, if you have been having difficulty getting wireless N speeds, look into your security settings. 

Now, my test network was as follows. I setup a laptop with a 1Gb network port, and plugged that into the back of a Linksys WRT320N wireless router that is running dd-wrt. I enabled a default network with no security, no internet. 

I put two folders on the laptop and shared them out. One contained a single large .ISO file (~1.7GB) and a folder containing a lot of medium to small files (1005 files, 151 folders, 705MB). 

I then installed each adapter with their factory software on a second laptop approximately 20 feet away with a wall between, attached them to this single purpose wireless environment, noted their connection speed and then copied the files over and timed them. 

Both the laptops were running Windows 7, x64. 

If you are using this, it is going to be a very convenient solution on it’s size alone. But does it perform?