Edimax EW-7811UTC wifi dongle support RPi3?

1st Official Post

    Hi all,

    After a constant battle I finally found the root of my problems - a mix between my router and it's 2.4Ghz wifi network. I came across it by dropping a .tar file to the Pi. My router is a TD-LINK TD-W9980 and although it's not positioned in a great spot (new build, master socket in a cupboard), it can only be 10 feet away from the pi with not much in the way. The transfer rate of this 100mb file was between 100kb/s - 200kb/s! No wonder it wasn't streaming anything! Checked and double checked my router settings, done a few of the old tricks - changed channels etc but nothing improved it. The PC near enough next to the router can max my 80mb fibre out on the same wifi network so who knows who to point the finger at. Apologies for the ramble.

    After some more digging, I found out that the three big old external antennas on the W9980 are for the 5Ghz band only. The 2.4 Ghz band run off internal antannae and as expected don't perform as well. So the next step is to buy a 5Ghz compatible USB dongle for the RPI3. Again a complete minefield of information but in the end managed to find the one mentioned in the subject at a good price and confirmed by a couple of sources to work with RPi / OpenELEC no problems. Can I make the assumption that because it is compatible with OpenELEC, that it isn't going to have issues with LibreELEC? Just works out the box? The correct answer is yes!

    And no, ethernet isn't an option unfortunately.

    Edited once, last by nickrob84 (May 31, 2016 at 11:42 PM).

    It my testing, the 5Ghz dongles make no performace improvements whatsoever and you're better off with a 300Mbps 2.4Ghz dongle like the TP-Link TL-WN821N. I've used these many times with OE but you will need a 2A power supply as you would with a 5Ghz stick.

    P.S Although not a neighbour freindly option, you could change your 2.4Ghz network to be 40Mhz wide and that will help with throughtput. With my Pi testing, that made the difference between being able to stream or not on 2.4Ghz when using an external 150Mbps 2.4Ghz dongle. Whatever you do, never use one of those tiny micro USB dongles as they are completely useless with very poor range and throughput.

    Edited once, last by xbmcnut (June 1, 2016 at 2:42 AM).

    I think just having a replacement for the onboard wifi is the main issue. Whilst I'm transferring a small file to it over the network to it at 100kb/s, my iPhone 6S on the same network and position is clocking up 55mb speedtests.

    Going back to the original point though about it working, all ok? Just plug it in and go?

    Yep, it will work fine. I've used the following devices on OE without issue.

    Cisco-Linksys WUSB600N Dual-Band Wireless-N USB Network Adapter
    EDIMAX WL7811UN 802.11n 150mb Nano USB and clones (do not use)
    EDIMAX EW-7811UTC AC600 Wireless USB Adapter. 802.11ac
    Tenda W311M Wireless-N150
    Tenda W522U dual band wireless N600 USB adapter
    TP-Link TL-WN721N 802.11n g/b Wireless USB Adapter
    TP-Link TL-WN821N 300Mbps Wireless USB Adapter (preferred)

    I'll do some speed testing tonight with a 10-15m range from my EA6500 and use both the internal WiFi and my EDIMAX EW-7811UTC AC600 Wireless USB Adapter and report back.

    Networking Benchmarks | Raspberry Pi Dramble

    Edited once, last by xbmcnut (June 1, 2016 at 4:00 AM).

    That's great news. Appreciate your help. Wifi was always a fantastic addition to the Raspberry Pi but it just seems to perform so badly. Hopefully the RPI4 will address this with a better solution as near enough every forum relating to the RPI3 you will find people talking about the poor onboard wifi.

    So when the dongle turns up. I disable both wired / wireless connections in LibreELEC settings and just let the USB dongle take over and connect to the 5G network? Simple as that?

    Edited once, last by nickrob84 (June 1, 2016 at 5:29 AM).

    Quote from nickrob84


    That's great news. Appreciate your help. Wifi was always a fantastic addition to the Raspberry Pi but it just seems to perform so badly. Hopefully the RPI4 will address this with a better solution as near enough every forum relating to the RPI3 you will find people talking about the poor onboard wifi.

    So when the dongle turns up. I disable both wired / wireless connections in LibreELEC settings and just let the USB dongle take over and connect to the 5G network? Simple as that?

    I'll let you know in about 5hrs as I've not tested external WiFi on my new Pi3 yet.

    Quote from nickrob84


    That's great news. Appreciate your help. Wifi was always a fantastic addition to the Raspberry Pi but it just seems to perform so badly. Hopefully the RPI4 will address this with a better solution as near enough every forum relating to the RPI3 you will find people talking about the poor onboard wifi.

    So when the dongle turns up. I disable both wired / wireless connections in LibreELEC settings and just let the USB dongle take over and connect to the 5G network? Simple as that?

    When you plug in the dongle, you end up with wlan0 (native) and wlan1 (the USB stick). Just choose wlan1 and connect to that. I found that the external 150Mbps 2.4Ghz dongle was marginally faster than the native Wifi at a distance of 5m.

    The image stack is as follows:

    • Native onboard 2.4Ghz (150Mbps)
    • Edimax 2.4Ghz (150Mbps)
    • Edimax 5Ghz 802.11ac (600Mbps)


    As you can see, the 5Ghz AC connection is nowhere near the theoritical and using a 300Mbps 2.4Ghz (with better range than 5Ghz) would probably achieve that too?

    Edited once, last by xbmcnut (June 1, 2016 at 8:20 AM).

    I realise that the upgrade to a 5ghz network won't do much, it's the two issues of just replacing the useless onboard wifi with something else and also my router TP-LINK W9980 only uses its big 3 directional external antennae for the 5ghz network. The 2.4ghz uses internal antennas which will be weaker especially considering its hidden in a cupboard. I'm just hoping the two together just make it a useable setup.

    Right next problem, got the dongle and plugged it in on a fresh install of 7.0.1. The Dongle seems to show up as wlan0 and built in as wlan1? I can see the 5G network on wlan0 but it won't connect. 5G netowork doesn't show up under wlan1.

    Finally got there, not 100% sure if everything is stable but connected the RPi via the dongle to the 5G network. Difference is literally night and day, transferring a file now goes over at around 5000kb/s rather than 200kb/s on the old set up.

    Although when it works it works very well, it doesn't seem very reliable interms of holding the connection. I.e 30 mins idle time, go back into Kodi and there is no connection but is fine after a reboot. Anything I can do about the general instabilities? Driver updates etc?

    Quote from nickrob84


    Although when it works it works very well, it doesn't seem very reliable interms of holding the connection. I.e 30 mins idle time, go back into Kodi and there is no connection but is fine after a reboot. Anything I can do about the general instabilities? Driver updates etc?

    What USB stick did you end up getting and are you using a 2A power supply?

    Quote from nickrob84


    Although when it works it works very well, it doesn't seem very reliable interms of holding the connection. I.e 30 mins idle time, go back into Kodi and there is no connection but is fine after a reboot. Anything I can do about the general instabilities? Driver updates etc?

    Check what chipset/driver it uses and see if you find information on how to disable the power saving modes of it.