Alfa Comparison
Alfa AWUS036H (the
legacy, gray one):
Is the best card available on the market, its compatible with
everything, every os, every tool. And it's cheap this days. It has a great
output power of 1-2W that make it able to work with big antennas without any
issues.
Alfa AWUS036NH (green one):
This was the original attempt to replace AWUS036H with a "n"
ready card, it failed big time. The performance of this card even on windows is
really bad. You will get much more signal in a "g" network with an
AWUS036H than with this one working in "n" mode. The BT5 driver is
almost stable, it just fails sometimes to start working and showing networks.
Alfa AWUS036NHR (white one):
This card was the second attempt to replace AWUS036H with a
"n" ready card, it almost got there. The signal quality matches what
is expected and the card works well normally under Windows. Drivers for BT5 are
unstable specially on the 32 bits version. Injection may fail.
Alfa AWUS036NHA (black one):
They finally managed to choose a chip that has the potential to replace
the old RT8187L AWUS036H card. It works really well with BT5r2 out of the box.
The card is Atheros based but it works fine with all the tools like reaver,
supports injection, scans well and the signal quality matches what it should
be. This card will replace the AWUS036H in the future for sure.
Right now the only drawback is the output power limited to 650mW.
Conclusion: If
you're about to buy a card, you should:
1. Buy AWUS036H
(legacy gray) if you don't care about "n" compatibly.
2. Buy AWUS036NHA
(black one) if you care about "n" and you want to have a useful card
for the future!
