ALFA AWUS036H 1000mW USB wireless/WiFi client driver notes:
ALFA AWUS036H USB wireless/WiFi client uses the RTL8187 chipset. Here are the drivers that are available for this chipset: You should consider updating your driver if you are having serious dropped-connection issues:
NOTE – THE REMAINDER OF THIS POST IS FROM MAY 2007 – DRIVER REFERENCES ARE NOW OUTDATED
Driver versions after 1221 (from Realtek site) are pretty flakey with XP SP2.
The CD that we are shipping has driver version 1207 (as of May 2007), which does not have any issues.
The REALTEK drivers from the REALTEK site, especially the newest, seem to constantly drop connections.
Also, if one “hardwires” an IP address – then the Realtek utility doesn’t really work. The connection is there, but it seems that the utility doesn’t see the dongle unless it was DHCP assigned.
Realtek is aware of the issues.
When Vista came out Realtek attempted to write a “Uni-driver” for all versions of windows. This is a good idea – but something went wrong. The older drivers seem to be more sensitive and more reliable. I suspect that they induced some “overhead” in the code which messed up the channel scan logic a bit. I’m trying to get them to “open source” it so I can look at it. I’m not a Windows Drivers guy, per se – but I’ll at least work the issues until someone gets it done.
I’ll let you know, as I know…in the meantime have people stick with the 1207 version: Use it without the utility and just rely on windows to do the configuration.