How To Install Usb Wifi Adapter On Kali Linux Usb Wifi

How To Install Usb Wifi Adapter On Kali Linux Usb Wifi 4,8/5 2240 votes

Aug 24, 2013  select the preferences menu and in the General setting enter the Wireless interface name as Wlan0. Now it will show you available wireless network. Connect with your credentials. Now run the ifconfig command, it will show you wlan interface also. Also Check:- How to Configure a Wireless Network Connection in Backtrack or Kali. How install a USB WIFI Driver If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed.

Best USB WiFi Adapter for Kali Linux: Compatible Dongles of 2019

Denise Bingham

For doing penetration testing, Kali Linux OS is the best platform to work with. But as it is not as popular as the Windows Operating Systems, there are limited resources to avail the most compatible devices like the scanner, printer, wireless adapter, mouse, PC, laptop for Kali Linux platform.

Yes, it is true that there are many devices introduced to work with the Linux environment regularly, but the incompatibility with older supported devices makes the task of choosing the best USB WiFi adapter for Kali Linux somewhat tricky, especially with the standard wireless support. So, I researched a bit and listed down some of the top wireless adapters that can support to do pen testing. Let’s have a look at them here.

Best Wireless Adapter for Kali Linux

1. Panda PAU05 300Mbps Wireless N USB Adapter

The Panda PAU05 N USB adapter uses the RT3070 chipset to support the Kali Linux OS and pen testing. One big advantage is that it can work even with the Raspberry Pi device.

Features of Panda PAU05 Wireless Adapter for Kali Linux are:

  • It has the capability to work with any wireless router with 2.4GHz frequency
  • PAU05 gives you the flexibility to use it in either ad-hoc or infrastructure modes
  • Apart from Kali Linux, it supports various Operating Systems like Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, CentOS, and Windows systems in 64-bit and 32-bit formats
  • It provides a high-speed internet of 300Mbps maximum over your wireless network
  • This wireless adapter supports various encryption security protocols including WPA, WPA-2, WEP for 128-bit & 64-bit, 802.11i, 802.1x, and other Cisco standards

2. Alfa Long-Range Dual-Band AC1200 USB 3.0 Wireless Adapter

The long-range WiFi adapter needs a good-quality antenna to capture and transmit signals from the far end. The Alfa AC1200 wireless adapter comes with compact yet powerful dual antennas with dual-band support.

Features of Alfa Long-Range AC1200 Wireless Adapter are:

  • Though the signal strength is not the fastest compared to other WiFi adapters listed here, this wireless device with Realtek RTL8812AU chipset offers the longest and reliable coverage over a network+
  • Dual band support of 5GHz and 2.4GHz with 5dBi dual antennas offers a maximum speed of 1200Mbps over your wireless network
  • Unlike the other long-range WiFi adapters, the Alfa AC1200 has a lightweight and convenient design with only 7 ounces weight
  • Supports the wireless security standards WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK, & WEP (128-bit and 64-bit)
  • It supports multiple Operating Systems including Windows, Kali Linux, Ubuntu, Mac, and other Linux distros

3. Panda Wireless PAU09 N600 WiFi Adapter

The PAU09 is another great product from Panda Wireless to help to do penetration testing on Kali Linux laptop or PC without any network disturbance. This wireless adapter also comes with dual 5dBi antennas to provide superfast 300Mbps speed on your network. If your computing system has 1GB memory, CPU speed of 1GHz, and a USB port, then you can use this Panda PAU09 without any hassle.

Features of Panda Wireless PAU09 WiFi Adapter for Kali Linux are:

  • Comes with the support of the latest wireless 802.11 b/g/n/ac standards
  • On both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands, it provides uninterrupted internet speed of 300Mbps due to its Ralink RT5572 chipset
  • The Panda technology helps to use this adapter in both the infrastructure and ad-hoc modes
  • This Kali Linux compatible WiFi adapter also supports the Operating Systems like Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, and other Linux distros
  • State-of-art security encryption protocols like WPA, WPA2, WEP in 645-bit and 128-bit are supported by this wireless adapter

4. 7inova™ 7U300A Wireless N Adapter with External Antenna

The ultrafast 7U300A WiFi adapter from 7inova offers to have a faster setup over your various Operating Systems including Kali Linux, Windows, Mac, openSUSE, Fedora, Mint, Lubuntu, Zorin, etc. Not only this, the super-capable 7inova wireless dongle easily connect even with your Raspberry Pi device to do innovative and useful projects.

Features of 7inova 7U300A Wireless Adapter are:

  • It provides a great speed of 300Mbps with the help of Ralink5370 chipset on your wireless network
  • 2dBi removable external antenna to have a long-range and high-gain which help to connect even to a weak signal
  • Cisco V1, V2, V3, WPA, WPA2, WEP of 64/128-bit, 802.11i, and 802.11x security protocols support
  • The antenna is easy-to-fit, can rotate in full, and ensuring that you have no signal loss for farthest of distance
  • Comes with lifetime manufacturer warranty which ensures to have a hassle free purchase

5. Wsky 1200Mbps USB WiFi Adapter

With the superfast speed of 12Gbps and support to the multiple OS platforms, the wireless USB adapter from Wsky is giving tough competition to the big brands in the market. If you need high-speed, constant, and reliable wireless internet connection for your Kali Linux laptop PC, then you should give it a try.

Features of Wireless USB Adapter Dongle from Wsky are:

  • It has dual band support to the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz to provide a lightning speed of up to 1200 Mbps.
  • Long-range high gain functionality allows you to use your machine from the far distance to the router and to have a comfortable working.
  • It is compatible with any type of WiFi router and supports various OS like Kali Linux, Windows, Mac, and other Linux distros.
  • You will get the support of the standard encryption protocols like WPS, WPA, WPA2, WEP, and WAPI along with a WPS push button in an encrypted connection over WPA. This feature makes you worry free from recalling the complex passwords.
  • It comes with an installation guide in a CD to help you set up the adapter quickly and easily.
  • 1-year manufacturer warranty offers you to have a hassle-free purchase.

Which dongle is compatible you think?

There are many benefits of USB WiFi adapters and so you need to be precise while picking up one from a list. And while choosing an adapter for Kali Linux, then it is advisable to see for the chipset it is using, rather than just focusing on the brand name. As in some cases, the Edimax nano WiFi adapter works well with Kali Linux but does not mean that this Amazon bestseller can help in performing the best penetration testing over the other wireless adapters.

I recommend going for the adapter with big-sized dBi antenna if you want a signal from the router at a possibly farthest range. If you want a stealth network connection, then you should go with the nano USB adapters. Descargar musica tropical de tabasco sauce. But, if you are just beginning with the pen testing or using the Kali Linux for the first time, then I prefer you to start with cheap-priced wireless adapters.

Which of the above will you buy and which is your favorite? Do you have any other device in mind or used one than mentioned here which works great with Kali Linux? Then hit the comment section below and spread your words with the world.

As pointed out by @roland in the comments you may find that the easiest, cheapest, fastest, and most reliable way to get a USB WiFi connection on your Linux box is by using USB tethering with your smartphone.

This is possible natively in Android. It is not possible with iOS unless iOS is jailbroken. iOS can share its cellular connection over USB natively, but not its WiFi connection unless it is jailbroken.

A Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (which supports 802.11ac 5Ghz) can also be used to accomplish a similar result, but using ethernet rather than USB.

I recommend considering some form of tethering before buying a USB WiFi device for the reasons explained below. Generally speaking, USB WiFi in Linux is a tricky thing to get right.

Read the Introduction in the Debian WiFi article before diving into Linux and USB WiFi devices. Also, feel free to read about my own experiences on this topic. I rewrote this article after a helpful commenter pointed out how problematic it is to recommend USB WiFi devices for Linux. Most manufacturers do not play well with Linux, with some notable exceptions.

Ever wonder some Amazon reviews have conflicting reports about Linux support? Read those articles I just listed! It is almost impossible to know which chipset one will receive when buying most USB WiFi devices except when buying 🐧 ThinkPenguin device.

I understand that ThinkPenguin devices may not be ideal for everyone. I am listing other, non-ThinkPenguin devices, that I have tested. However, for the reasons I stated above, it is a gamble whether or not they will work for everyone. ThinkPenguin devices are a much simpler option for Linux. Unfortunately, ThinkPenguin devices lack 802.11ac support and are a bit more expensive.

You are responsible for your own purchasing decisions and I make no guarantees!

This is not an exhaustive list. I have not purchased hundreds of cards. Fujitsu siemens lifebook e8010 drivers xp manual. I have purchased several cards, and am ranking only the cards I own. As an average Linux user, I will do the best I can to relate what I found so that it may help others.

All cards were tested using Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS Xenial Xerus 4.10.0-37-generic #41~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 6 22:42:59 UTC 2017 against a server running iperf 3.0.11. Each test was performed over a period of 4 hours. See my wifi-testing repo if you are interested.

Chipset: AR9271

Driver: ath9k_htc

The TPE-N150USB performed very reliably in my tests. Download speeds averaged 31.16 Mbps and upload speeds averaged 11.58 Mbps. The max speeds never topped 40.0 Mbps, but I found that the overall consistency in performance was stellar.

From the research I have done, I would say this is going to be the most reliable Linux supported mini USB WiFi networking interface a consumer can except to find.

This card is supported by the Linux Kernel, which means that no special intervention is required to get this NIC to work. Just plug it in. It also supports Monitor mode, which is great for security analysis. Since ThinkPenguin uses reliable chipsets we can have confidence that we will receive the chipset that was advertised.

This card is my favorite considering the size, performance consistency, and Linux support.

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Chipset: AR9271

Driver: ath9k_htc

The TPE-N150USBL performed very reliably in my tests. Download speeds averaged 32.25 Mbps and upload speeds averaged 17.35 Mbps. The max speeds never topped 40.0 Mbps, but I found that the overall consistency in performance was stellar.

This card seems to be almost identical to the TPE-N150USB. Both cards use the same chipset, same vendor ids, same product ids, and had almost identical performance statistics. This card was a tad faster, but it seems the difference in speeds is very slight. The external antenna on the TPE-N150USBL did not make much difference in testing. In my opinion, this card is not worth the additional cost compared to the TPE-N150USB.

This card is supported by the Linux Kernel, which means that no special intervention is required to get this NIC to work. Just plug it in. It also supports Monitor mode, which is great for security analysis. Since ThinkPenguin uses reliable chipsets we can have confidence that we will receive the chipset that was advertised.

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Potential Chipsets: RTL8811AU

Potential Drivers: scrivy/rtl8812au, diederikdehaas/rtl8812AU, gordboy/rtl8812au, abperiasamy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux, gnab/rtl8812au, sloretz/rtl8811au, Edimax, rtl8812au-dkms

Purchasing this card means there is no guarantee that anyone will receive the same chipset I received, as I state in the warnings above. Performance and support for this card will vary based on which chipset it ships with.

Getting this device to work on Linux was complicated. There aremultipledrivers by multipleauthors for this chipset. None of these linked drivers worked for me.

I tried multiple variations of the official Edimax driver code, but none of the Edimax drivers built successfully for me, and I did not want to spend time debugging their build scripts.

I found that the Ubuntu package for this driver would not build on my (vanilla) Ubuntu install either.

This article finally helped me find a working driver. For me, the working driver was the rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux driver by scrivy.

Once working, this card seemed blazing fast (relative to other Linux WiFi adapters that I tested) for me on Ubuntu 16.04.3. The performance boost came from 802.11ac. With 802.11ac I saw download speeds average 64.16 Mbps and upload speeds average 59.42 Mbps.

Overall, the performance of this card seemed very reliable for me.

Please note this is clearly not a well supported device on Linux, there are risks in downloading software from random repos, there are multiple versions of this device sold by Edimax, I only tested on Ubuntu, others may well receive a different chipset that I did, and there is no guarantee this card will work for everyone.

This is the only 802.11ac card I tested. Speeds are all for my 802.11ac network.

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Potential Chipsets: RT5372

Potential Drivers: rt2800usb

Purchasing this card means there is no guarantee that anyone will receive the same chipset I received, as I state in the warnings above. Performance and support for this card will vary based on which chipset it ships with.

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This card (at least, the one that I received) uses a reasonably common chipset, and so a reasonably well supported Linux driver out of the box on Ubuntu 16.04.3.

It is relatively cheap, worked out of the box, and connected to my AP without issue. The chipset I received supports monitor mode, but it is very likely others who buy this card may not have a chipset that supports monitor mode. Compared to the other cards here, I would say the performance is very unreliable.

Just look at the wide range of download and upload speeds below. I re-ran these tests multiple times at different times of day (and overnight) and the speeds are very inconsistent in all test cases.

I have only seen one reported chipset for this device in my research, but as I warn multiple times, that is no guarantee that the card others receive will have the same chipset as mine.

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Potential Chipsets: RT3070, Atheros ?, RT2870, RT5732

Potential Drivers: rt2800usb

Purchasing this card means there is no guarantee that anyone will receive the same chipset I received, as I state in the warnings above. Performance and support for this card will vary based on which chipset it ships with.

This card (at least, the one that I received) uses a reasonably common chipset, and so a reasonably well supported Linux driver out of the box on Ubuntu 16.04.3.

It is relatively cheap, worked out of the box, and connected to my AP without issue. The chipset I received supports monitor mode, but it is very likely others who buy this card may not have a chipset that supports monitor mode. Compared to the other cards here, I would say the performance is very unreliable.

Just look at the wide range of download and upload speeds below. I re-ran these tests multiple times at different times of day (and overnight) and the speeds are very inconsistent in all test cases.

I have seen multiple reported chipset for this device in my research, and as I warn multiple times, there is no guarantee that the card others receive will have the same chipset as mine.

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