Running Raspberry Pi and my regular desktop off one wifi adapter

Question

So my biggest issue with my Pi right now is the god awful Wifi speed. I am currently using a micro Edimax Wifi adapter but it barely can get 1Mb download in a 300Mb download speed house. However, on my desktop I am using a Netgear A6210 USB Adapter that works perfectly. Here's the big question: Is it possible to get a USB splitter and use the one adapter for both my Windows 10 Desktop and my Ubuntu Pi?

Added information:

• My house is not wired for Ethernet accessibility

• I have used the Netgear adapter on a Linux system prior to this so I can get a driver to make that work

• If needed, I can supply any additional information

Answer 1

Per the comments below your question, that's just not how USB works. Your desktop is enjoying a variety of advantages over the Pi - a USB 3.0 adapter, superior bandwidth on its internal buses, faster CPU, etc. etc. etc. It's not entirely realistic to expect similar performance from a Pi.

The Netgear adapter you've spec'd may well not work as expected in any case - USB 3.0 devices can get a bit weird with the Pi's USB 2.0 sockets despite claims of backwards compatibility.

You might want to investigate using a wired ethernet connection directly into the Pi (via HomePlug if you don't fancy long cables), or looking into something like a USB gigabit ethernet adapter. Jeff Geerling, in this article on jeffgeerling.com, claims to have achieved the following on a Pi 3 using this approach:

• Internal LAN (10/100): 94.4 Mbits/sec (11.8 MB/sec)
• USB 802.11n WiFi: 44.5 Mbits/sec (5.6 MB/sec)
• USB Gigabit LAN (10/100/1000): 321 Mbits/sec (40 MB/sec)

If you're set on retaining a wireless adapter then your best bet is likely to muck about with environmental factors - the Edimax adapter should support higher speeds than you're seeing. Move the Pi closer, turn off the microwave, open doors, install a wireless repeater, etc.

Answer 2

A USB switch will allow you to change which computer a USB device is connected to at the press of a button. I have my Raspberry Pi 3 and PC share my keyboard, mouse and wireless headphones. The issue is only one computer is connected at a time. If you don't need both connected to the network, this will work. If you need both active, you could setup the PC to share it's connection over USB. Searching for programming or connecting a rpi over usb should get you instructions.

Answer 3

You could run a wire into the ethernet port on your PC and share the PC's wifi internet connection.

How to do that is answered here.

How can I connect my Pi directly to my PC and share the internet connection?

By geoji