Alfa U036H
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Cheap, Plastic, and Stupidly Useful: My Alfa Wi-Fi Range Extender

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2019 update: The Alfa AWUS036H has (finally) been discontinued, and is no longer available to buy. The device itself, though? It’s still going strong.

The closest equivalent is the AWUS036NHA, although many similar models from other manufacturers are also available.

When you travel all the time, your expectations for what constitutes ‘decent internet’ tend to nosedive. When I had a home, fast downloads, reliable connections, and crystal-clear video calling were the bare minimum. Now, getting more than two bars of signal and being able to load Gmail in under a minute counts as a successful day.

I have a special knack of ending up in hotel rooms that are just far enough from the wireless router to ensure a shitty connection. Sometimes I can manage a room change, usually I can’t (probably because I’m paying the cheapest rate because, well, I’m cheap).

Even a few Airbnb places have had similar problems — the cottage I’m in right now in the English countryside gets its connection from the main house twenty metres away, which means two options.

I can stand outside in the driveway, precariously balancing my laptop in one hand and slowly typing this article with the other, or plug in a cheap plastic gadget and eliminate the problem entirely.

I’m going with option B.

My Alfa AWUS036H (catchy name, right?) really doesn’t look like much. Even when it was new, it wasn’t going to win any awards for great design.

A smallish silver plastic case, single flashing light that tells you very little, ugly black screw-on aerial. After two years of being bashed around in my backpack, it’s now scuffed, scratched and generally beaten up.

Given I paid under thirty bucks for it in the first place, it shouldn’t really be working at all after abuse like that — yet somehow it still is.

And it’s seriously great.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve turned an unusable Wi-Fi connection into one that’s strong and solid, one or two bars of flaky signal into four or five. I’ve connected to networks down the hall and down the road, including many I didn’t even know existed before plugging it in.

It worked like a charm on my old laptops running Windows 7 and 8, and hasn’t missed a beat on my new one running Windows 10 either — it was detected automatically and just started working.

If you’ve got a Mac, though, you’re out of luck. The drivers haven’t been updated for recent versions of the operating system, and it didn’t work on last year’s Macbook Pro model when I tested it.

Two wireless networks

After plugging it into any old USB socket, the light on the Alfa flashes for a few seconds to let me know it’s alive. Soon after, a second wireless network card shows up in the Network and Sharing list (I’ve renamed it to the dull-yet-accurate ‘External WiFi’, but you can call it whatever you like if it helps you distinguish it from the inbuilt one).

Still, it’s typically not too hard to figure out which one is which — see the connection that has a whole bunch of extra networks available, with much stronger signal? Yeah, that’ll be it.

One thing I have noticed is the card is a bit picky about the mini-USB cable that you plug into it. As long as you connect the one it came with, or an equally high-quality one, it’ll be fine — but I recently happened to use a different one I had lying around and it totally refused to work. No lights, no network, nothing.

After five minutes of assuming the card had finally died, I dug out a different, thicker cable as a last-ditch effort and everything sprang back into life.

A better connection for my laptop is great, of course, but by itself the Alfa doesn’t help get my other devices connected — I can’t plug it into a tablet or phone. For that, I combine the range extender with a piece of software called Connectify Hotspot (again, Windows-only).

It lets me turn any wired or Wi-Fi connection into a hotspot for other devices to connect to. Even with half a dozen devices using the hotspot, as has been happening the last few days, it rarely misses a beat.

The paid versions offer more options, but even the free one will get the job done. For extra geek credibility you can even share your VPN connection, using three different bits of technology to turn an unusable, insecure network into a reliable, secure way to get online with all your devices.

There are very few gadgets that I recommend as ‘must-have’ for travellers. If you’re using a Windows laptop, however, and work from the road or otherwise need to be connected on the move, this cheap plastic range extender makes the list.

It’s one of those rare devices that just does exactly what it’s supposed to, reliably and well, for very little money. These days, I wouldn’t travel without it.


Images and screenshots via author

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20 Comments

  1. cheap, plastic and useful? Love it! Question though, do I still need to use a VPN with this or rely on the multiple encryption profiles listed on Amazon? Thanks!

    1. Dave Dean Dave Dean says:

      You’ll still need a VPN — the encryption profiles listed on Amazon are just standard wifi security that stops people from (easily) hacking into wifi networks that they don’t have the password for.

      If you’re using a public network that doesn’t have a password — or are somewhere like a cafe where everyone knows the password — they won’t help you, unfortunately.

  2. I hate the thought of carrying yet another piece of tech with me when I travel, but this one is probably going to be added to my bags. I’ve spent way too many hours in cold hotel hallways and hanging around outside the main guesthouse just to get online.

    Thanks for the review. J

    1. Dave Dean Dave Dean says:

      Ahh yes, the sheer joy of standing around in cold hallways and reception areas trying to coax another bar of signal out of the wifi network. Not that I’d know anything about that, of course… 😉

  3. Avatar bob Chase says:

    Amazon recommends two or three other models for Mac OSX
    AWUS036NHR, AWUS036NH, AWUS036NEH, AWUS051NH.
    – can you comment?

    1. Dave Dean Dave Dean says:

      I don’t have first-hand experience of any of them, so I’d suggest going with Amazon reviews — look for the one with the highest rating that’s confirmed to work with your version of OSX.

  4. Do you have any recommendations or thoughts for something capable of 802.11n and with dual antennas for both 2.4 and 5 GHz? I haven’t been on the road internationally for a couple years, but I’m sure we’ll start seeing more and more of n networks. Are we still at a point where 5GHz signals are going to be strong enough, even in a saturated 2.4GHz environment, that a more powerful 5GHz antenna is overkill?

    Thanks!

  5. Avatar Wander Pig says:

    This website is awesome. Not sure how I’ve never got round to purchasing one of these bad boys before. This sure seems like a handy device for us travelers.

    Warm Regards,
    Dan

    1. Dave Dean Dave Dean says:

      Thanks Dan! And yeah, it makes such a difference. I’m still using this one — over three years old, even more beaten up, and somehow it’s still working. 🙂

  6. Hey Dave, this is great but , having found the available about wifis, what can be done about the passwords they seem to all have?

    1. Dave Dean Dave Dean says:

      A discussion of breaking into Wi-Fi networks is beyond the scope of this article (and often illegal), so I’d suggest just asking for the passwords wherever you can. Foursquare can also be a good place to get passwords for businesses like bars, cafes etc.

  7. Hi Dave,

    Thanks so much for this article. I want to get a range extender for SE Asia and India. I am looking at this one, but not sure if it is compatible with my Mac Air running OS Sierra 10.12. Have you updated? Have you updated? If so is this range extender still working for you? I was also looking at the: AWUS036NHR V.2 I still can’t tell which will be compatible. Thoughts?

    1. Dave Dean Dave Dean says:

      Hi Heather,

      Unfortunately I’m a Windows user, so my experience isn’t much use to you. It still works under Windows 10, for what it’s worth, but I don’t believe it’s worked with current versions of MacOS for quite a while now. If you want something similar with good reviews that does work with the latest MacOS versions, this looks good (and is even cheaper!)

  8. Avatar Lisa Griffin says:

    Has anyone tested their newer version? (at least I think it’s newer, its listed as one of their ‘hot items’) I don’t think newer is always better (have you used Windows 10). Do you know which is better, the 036H or 051NH v2? https://www.alfa.com.tw/products_show.php?pc=67&ps=241

    1. Dave Dean Dave Dean says:

      I haven’t used the newer model, sorry, and there aren’t many reviews of it around either. If you decide to go with it, try to buy from somewhere with a good return policy in case it doesn’t meet your needs.

  9. Hey there! Great article, once again! I own a brand new laptop running windows 10. Since you have great words for both the panda device and the alfa, I was wondering if one got your preference?

    thanks

    1. If I was buying one today, I’d get the Panda. It’s a little cheaper, and has support for newer Wi-fi technologies.

  10. Hello! I teach online so I need to have dependable wifi that will allow for me to reach China and back quickly. Will this do it for me if the wifi where I’m staying is unreliable? This past summer, I was staying in a hotel in the Poconos and, fortunately had taken the week off. The internet at this huge resort (condos, hotel rooms, cabins) only worked between the hours of 4am and 6am. After that ,it just spun and spun and spun. I don’t want to take time off everytime I travel.- mainly because I can’t afford it. Plus I only own a cheap, $20 every 3 month, tracfone that doesn’t have internet so I can’t go that route.
    Thanks for any suggestions you can give me!

    1. If the Wi-fi problem is caused by weak signal (ie, you’re too far from the router), a range extender like this will help. In the case of your resort, though, it sounds more like they just didn’t have enough capacity for all the devices that were connected, so the Internet only worked properly when most people were sleeping.

      In that situation, your options are to only stay in places with several reviews mentioning good Internet, or switch to a smartphone or Mi-fi device with a strong cell connection when the Wi-fi at your accommodation sucks.

  11. I realise this has been posted a few years ago but just wanted to say you can still make it work on a Mac on High Sierra.
    If you download the official drivers it will be recognised by your Mac, but the App crashes after a few seconds, there’s a way around it though.
    There’s a preference Pane called Ralinkwireless which is the older one or DWA 140, they both work, one caveat, it doesn’t seem to work with enterprise WPA, at least not the DWA 140.

    Note, I don’t know if you can still get the official drivers from Alfa, I checked earlier today and it seems the official site is offline, this might be a fluke or they went bust/taken over by another company.

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