This post is more than 5 years old
3 Posts
0
79720
July 25th, 2013 18:00
Dual band wireless?
I recently upgraded my computers and network, computers first. The computer in question is an Inspiron M5040 with a DW1503 wireless card I purchased in March or so. I recently upgraded my router to a dual band router, and my computer can't take advantage of the 5ghz band, it won't even see it. What dual band wireless card can I upgrade with that's basically plug and play, pop out the old one, slide in the new one, install the driver and go? Any solution?
No Events found!
blkwdw86
3 Posts
1
July 26th, 2013 14:00
Thanks! That was what I was looking for. I'll see if I can't make one work, I appreciate it!
Dell-Kuldeep M
2 Intern
•
621 Posts
0
July 26th, 2013 13:00
Hi blkwdw86,
Dell ships this system model with the below mentioned wireless cards, however none of these support dual band.
The system uses half Mini cards and so I will provide you with a list of dual band cards available.
I will suggest you to go for the advanced N series cards. However, Dell has not tested these cards with this system model.
Also these are not plug n play cards and will require drivers to be installed.
Please refer to the system manual for parts replacement and read the safety information that shipped with your computer. The link for manual is http://bit.ly/Tm9a4F.
Please feel free to reply for any further assistance.
blkwdw86
3 Posts
0
August 2nd, 2013 07:00
Kuldeep, your list of compatible cards did me just right! Upgrade complete!
I went through each card's specs and settled on the card best suited for my needs. My router is an Asus RT-N66U, a 3x3 MIMO router capable of 450 Mbps. I figured if I'm going to upgrade, I might as well go whole hog, so I settled on the Intel WiFi Link 5300. I looked hard at the 6300, more or less the best to be had, but it's essentially the 5300 with VPro features I'll'll never use anyway, with a $35 price difference.
Unfortunately, since the M5040 was never built with any dual-band cards, the computer was not equipped with the third antenna wire that a 3x3 card needs. No worries, a little extra effort had that problem solved. The HTL-008 5ghz wires from a Toshiba fit the bill, I separated out the gray wire I needed and routed it through the computer's display, took an extra 20 minutes.
Upon completing the upgrade and starting up the unit, it wouldn't automatically install the driver, as expected. I had pre-downloaded the driver from Dell, and attempted to install it, but it would not install. It gave me a message along the lines of "cannot install this package on this system". So I ethernetted onto the internet and went to Intel's site, used their detection utility, and installed the driver it selected.
Voila!
Results are QUITE satisfactory! I roughly benchmarked the DW1503 card before I took it apart. I uploaded a 1.3 gb file to my Network Attached Storage device, it took 14 minutes with a reported speed of around 1.16 Mbps. After the upgrade, the same file from the same physical location took 4 minutes with a reported speed of 4.8 Mbps! Very nice, and exactly the results I was looking for!
Thanks for your help! As customary, Dell never lets me down!
Dell-Kuldeep M
2 Intern
•
621 Posts
0
August 2nd, 2013 13:00
Hi blkwdw86,
Glad to know that the information helped. I appreciate your efforts and technical acumen.
Let me know if you need any further assistance.
PTDavis
1 Message
0
December 15th, 2019 12:00
I tried to install the Azurewave RTL8821AE on a M5040 and wont work, This is a dual band NIC and is being sold for small cost. It is better to stick with the NIC that Dell has tested, However this NIC dual band PCI-E card installed good on an N5040 which has the P6200 processor....