When looking for Wifi adapters, there are reasons why you would not just go ahead and buy whatever your favorite $DEALER has in stock. If you have some experience with Wifi adapters and drivers, especially under Linux, you’ll know that in general Atheros chips are what you want. They have a long tradition of both feature set and decent drivers: the old MadWifi drivers were the first Wifi drivers to actually support virtual interfaces on Linux (yes, MadWifi ha issues of its own with its binary HAL explaining why it never got merged into the kernel).
Now say we’re looking for a small USB Wifi adapter, IEEE 802.11n, because there are no IEEE 802.11ac USB drivers in the mainline kernel yet. And small meaning it should have an internal antenna. If we look at Wikidevi’s Atheros chipset table, we’ll see that what we’re ideally looking for (IEEE 802.11n, USB) is an adapter based on either the AR7010 or the AR9271 chip.
Which brings us to the next problem: where do we get one? Many of the devices listed at Wikidevi are not available in Germany and some manufacturers change their chipsets between hardware revisions more often than some people their underwear:
| Product | 2,4 GHz / 5 GHz | Antenna | Chipset | USB ID | Driver |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AVM | |||||
| + / + | Internal | AR9001U-2NX (AR9170 (Otus) + AR9104) 1 | 057c:8401 | carl9170 2 | |
| + / – | Internal | AR9001U-2NG (AR9170 (Otus) + AR9102) 1 | 057c:8402 | carl9170 2 | |
| + / – | Internal | AR9271 | 057c:8403 | ath9k_htc | |
| FRITZ!WLAN USB Stick N v2 | + / + | Internal | 057c:8501 | rt2800usb | |
| D-Link | |||||
| + / – | AR9271 | 07d1:3a10 | ath9k_htc | ||
| + / – | Internal | 07d1:3b11 | |||
| + / – | Internal | 07d1:3c13 | rt2800usb | ||
| + / – | Internal | 2001:3301 | |||
| + / – | Internal | 07d1:3302 | |||
| + / – | Internal | AR9001U-2NG (AR9170 (Otus) + AR9102) 1 | 07d1:3a0f | carl9170 2 | |
| + / – | Internal | 07d1:3300 | |||
| + / + | Internal | AR9001U-2NX (AR9170 (Otus) + AR9104) 1 | 07d1:3c10 | carl9170 2 | |
| + / + | Internal | AR9001U-2NX (AR9170 (Otus) + AR9104) 1 | 07d1:3a09 | carl9170 2 | |
| + / – | Internal | 07d1:3c11 | rt2800usb | ||
| + / + | Internal | 2001:3c1a | rt2800usb | ||
| DWA-160 rev C1 | + / + | Internal | 2001:3c21 | rt2800usb | |
| Netgear | |||||
| + / – | Internal | 0846:9000 | |||
| + / – | Internal | AR9001U-NG (AR9170 (Otus) + AR9101) 1 | 0846:9001 | carl9170 2 | |
| + / – | Internal | AR9271 | 0846:9030 | ath9k_htc | |
| + / + | Internal | AR9001U-2NX (AR9170 (Otus) + AR9104) 1 | 0846:9010 | carl9170 2 | |
| + / + | Internal | 0846:9011 | |||
| WNDA3100 v3 | + / + | Internal | 0846:9014 | ||
| WNDA3200 | + / + | Internal | AR9002U-2NX (AR7010 + AR9280) | 0846:9018 | ath9k_htc |
| TP-Link | |||||
| + / – | Internal | AR9271 | 0fc3:1006 | ath9k_htc | |
| + / – | AR9271 | 0fc3:1006 | ath9k_htc | ||
| + / – | Internal | AR9271 | 0fc3:9271 | ath9k_htc | |
| TL-WN722N | + / – | AR9271 | 0fc3:9271 | ath9k_htc | |
| + / – | Internal | AR9001U-2NG (AR9170 (Otus) + AR9102) 1 | 0fc3:9170 | carl9170 2 | |
| + / – | Internal | AR9001U-2NG (AR9170 (Otus) + AR9102) 1 | 0fc3:1002 | carl9170 2 | |
| + / – | Internal | AR9002U-2NG (AR7010 + AR9287) | 0fc3:7015 | ath9k_htc | |
| TL-WN821N v4 | + / – | Internal | 0bda:8178 | rtl8192cu | |
| + / – | AR9001U-2NG (AR9170 (Otus) + AR9102) 1 | 0fc3:1002 | carl9170 2 | ||
| + / – | AR9002U-2NG (AR7010 + AR9287) | 0fc3:7015 | ath9k_htc | ||
| TL-WN822N v3 | + / – | 0bda:8178 | rtl8192cu | ||
1: Draft N chip
2: Said to be unstable
3: Some dealers advertise a Netgear WNA1100M which is actually a RealTek-based WNA1000M!
Thus it appears that the only safe bet remaining is to get a TP-Link TL-WN722N, which, however, has an external antenna connected to it, which makes it rather unhandy if eg. you want to connect it to a Raspberry Pi Zero. You could of course also gamble and try to get the right hardware version of eg. the TL-WN721N. Or try to get A WNDA3200 on eBay.