Why is setting up wireless so hard?

During this past thanksgiving I helped my parents changed from a phoneline network (HPNA) to a wireless network. The phoneline network had slowed down to a crawl and was unable to provide decent speeds.

For awhile my dad had been planing on switching the phoneline network to the wireless network. He purchased the D-Link DIR-825 router and the D-Link DWA-160 from amazon.

The DIR-825 seems to work fine. The wireless on the laptops seem to work fine also. The real adventure was trying to get the wireless to work on my moms Dell desktop computer.

The installation of the DWA-160 went fine. The drivers were installed and we began to test the wireless. The signal strength was only about 35% and the speeds would fluctuate between 24 and 130. The speeds were almost random and we also suffered random disconnects.

I went with my Dad to best buy and decided we should try a different wireless card. We selected the linksys WUSB600N. Installing this wireless device provided little if any improvement. We then decided that would should try the hawking HWDN1. My dad had the 802.11g model and it seems to work quite well. We were in for a surprise.

The installation of the HWDN1 went well. We were instructed to plug the device into any open USB port. Next the wireless software loaded and we were surprised at the signal. The signal strength never went above 20% and the speeds were never any higher than 19 Mbps. I thought that maybe the drivers were old, so I downloaded the new drivers, which didn't offer any improvements. This product was supposed to provide higher speeds, but it did provided headaches more than anything. Overall, I was completely unhappy with this product and the support that hawking provided.

We then decided to go back to the DWA-160, since that product appeared to be the most stable. After using the computer for several minutes and having many disconnects, a new solution had to be found. My dad and I were debating if we should get a PCI wireless card or a wireless repeater. We finally decided to go with a PCI card and give it a try. The sales people at best buy said we can return the product if it doesn't work that well.

The D-Link DWA-552 was the PCI card we decided to use. I downloaded the newest drivers and then disconnected the DWA-160. I opened the case of the dell computer and took out the modem and replaced with the DWA-552. Once the computer rebooted, I installed the drivers and began to test the wireless.

I was expecting to have similar results to the other products we had purchased. I was surprised when the wireless signal was in the high 60's. The speed also seemed to be steady at 130 Mbps. Overall this product appears to be working the best. I think the three antenna's on the back probably are the reason this product works so good.

Setting up a wireless network should not be this difficult. There is no reason it should take almost 4 days to get the wireless to work properly. I guess wireless is meant more for laptops than desktops, but there is certain situations where wireless is the only option. Hopefully in the next few years, wireless products will improve and all products will work flawlessly.