Review on 📶 Netgear WNA3100M-100ENS Wireless Mini USB Adapter: Compact, Reliable Connectivity by Amber Chavez

My Netgear access point is set to work in N300 mode. I also have a WD external network drive. It is connected to the router/access point via an Ethernet cable. My problem is that it takes a very long time to transfer files from my laptop (with integrated 802.11b+g). The connection is set to 54 Mbps, but the net throughput was only around 15 Mbps, which is adequate in a noisy environment. So I decided to buy this adapter which gives me extra bandwidth. Installed - nice and easy - 300Mbps connection - impressive. But. I started transferring files to my network drive and they turned out to be very slow - around 650 kbps. I tried to download files from the internet - they went at a maximum speed of 3 Mbit/s - this is a limitation of my internet provider. I disabled the WNA3100M adapter and used the one built into my laptop. The transfer rate to my drive was 15 Mbit/s again. Okay, I've narrowed the cause down to the WNA3100M adapter. Transferring to and from a network drive is done on port 445 and this seems to be causing problems. At first I thought it was caused by antivirus and firewall but I disabled both and it didn't help. In addition, the built-in WiFi adapter works flawlessly in the exact same environment. I'm not sure if anyone has tested this adapter's network throughput, but I believe this is a device driver issue that should be resolved. I tried speaking to Netgear tech support but they didn't have any helpful advice for me. I will have to send it back as it doesn't do what I expected.