PCI(e?) Wireless Card - Allows multiple connections to single router

Question

I'm moving my desktop PC from the basement, to the living room (oh happy day!). The spot I've picked does not have access to an Ethernet port, so I'm shopping around for a pci/e wifi card that will do a couple things for me.

I want to connect the the same router more than one time, in the same vein as a duel network interface card... except using wireless.

My home router is an Asus brand AC1300 router, it throws a N connection in both the 2.4 and 5 bands. I'd like to connect to both bands at the same time, or the same band 2 times.

I'd like to keep my budget under 100usd, no preference on antenna positioning or brand.

---Disclaimer---

I understand that connecting to the router 2 times will not improve internet speeds, I'm after the local network transfer speeds.
I'm also aware that this will not improve signal strength
Why do I want this? Well, since you asked... I do several large file transfers multiple times a day... More speed means less downtime.

If this type of hardware doesn't exist, I will end up just running Ethernet upstairs again. I'd like to avoid it, because of reasons.

Answer 1

I found the answer here, by user spiff (First line edited to match context)

Dual band cards cannot connect to two signals at once, the term you are looking for is "simultaneous dual-band" which is also called "dual-band concurrent". I'm not aware of any client card that is. Simultaneous dual-band support is something only APs do, in order to support legacy 2.4GHz clients and more modern 5GHz clients at the same time.

If you want your dual-band client card to automatically pick the best band, make sure both radios in your simultaneous dual-band AP are publishing the same network name (SSID) with the same security mode and same password. I recommend WPA2-personal a.k.a. WPA2-PSK, and I recommend AES-CCMP only; don't bother enabling TKIP (this may be called something like "WPA2/WPA mixed mode") unless you know for a fact that you still have an old product around from c. 2002-2003 that supports TKIP but not AES.

If you don't have a simultaneous dual-band AP, and instead have two separate APs (one for 2.4 and one for 5GHz), still make sure they're both publishing the same network name, with the exact same security mode and password.

Answer 2

This will not work as you intend, i.e. to improve performance/bandwidth on your LAN. This is not a limitation of the wireless protocols (You also would not see an increase in performance using two NIC's (network cards) on the same LAN), it is due to the TCP/IP:

For example sending a file from IP 1 to IP 2, the individual file must follow the same path for the functioanlity in TCP to work, that ensure the data gets from point A to B with integrity intact.

So I have a network card with 4x GBit/s ports, and they are teamed together (using the LACP protocol, not that it matters). When sending/receiving files from another server with the same setup, the maximum throughput is equivalent to 1 GBit/s (i.e. it maxes out at about 113 MB/s).

If you want better performance, buy some decent Cat6 cable with a colour that matches the walls, and run a length between your computers and ensure they have 1gb network cards (you can get those for $10 these days). It will save a whole lot of pain trying different technologies that will not acheive what you want.

Answer 3

I want to connect the the same router more than one time, in the same vein as a duel network interface card... except using wireless.

Wireless routers already do this!

With an ethernet cable, you have a bundle of copper wires streaming 1's and 0's. Each pair of wires is a stream, and ethernet cables are built with a fixed number of pairs. If you want more streams (bandwidth) with wired, you just add more wires.

With wireless, antennas are analogous to those wire pairs. Adding more antennas allows more simultaneous streams of data coming into the same device.

Take a minute and read up on MIMO.
This technology has been built-in to WiFi and all sorts of wireless broadcasting equipment for a decade already. This is how WiFi can vary in speed so much, as multiple antennas are not always free to serve a single device on the network.

Multi-User MIMO is an improvement on MIMO that sort of solves that problem too. Many high end AC routers provide this feature and come with a large number of antennas to support it.

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Your router already has WiFi AC with MU-MIMO support for 2 antennas, so its max speed is 867 Mbps to any wireless device with 2 antennas and MIMO support. I would suggest a WiFi adapter (also AC) with at least 2 antennas and MIMO support to take full advantage of that.

The ASUS PCE-AC56 would be the most appropriate PCIe adapter to pair with your router.

If you want to upgrade your WiFi even further, then buying a new router with MU-MIMO that uses 4 antennas can achieve 3.39 Gbps to a WiFi card with 4 antennas & MIMO support.

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Edit: I just realized this was an old question that was bumped by the community bot. Even if you've run that cable already, I still think this answer may be helpful to anyone finding this question from search engines.