Alfa AWUS036ACHM 802.11ac WiFi Range Boost USB Adapter

March 2025 product worked. I was able to plug it in directly into a windows machine running virtual box. It connected to a kali VM. No drivers or anything else to install.

Moving into a trailer, this wireless adapter easily pulls Wi-Fi from the house. A hotspot network is then created for my 3d printer. It also picks-up all the neighbor's Wi-Fi for several blocks. Pretty amazing low-cost gadget. Forget an Internet Extender, just plug-in one of these. Highly Recommend.

This adapter works straight out of the box on Kali Linux 2024.4. Monitor mode works great and very good range, I was testing BSSID's around 80m away.

Works great in various operating systems. I have used them Raspberry Pi 4's (Bullseye and Bookworm), Ubuntu 24.04 and OpenWRT (23.05.5 and 24.10.0).

For people who do not use Linux (correctly GNU/Linux) I can say that this is Alfa's best so far.The rest of this is tech talk you don't care to know.I asked what the chipset and got non sequitur answers from a couple GNU/Linux users that it works real good.Okay, I use Debian myself but that is not what I asked. When I got the adapter I plugged it in and at the commmand line entered:lsusbPart of the answer to that command was "Bus 005 Device 023: ID 0e8d:7610 MediaTek Inc. WiFi". So the chipset is MediaTek.If you have usbutils installed you can do that from the command line as well.I've had the RealTek and Atheros adapters from Alfa, Inc. RealTek was strong and Atheros was more flexible but weaker. MediaTek is better than either of those.BTW, when I got the RealTek model (Alfa's AWUS036NH) I went thru the pain of installing from that CD where the relevant file was buried deep inside a Russian doll of folders.But when I got the Atheros model (Alfa's AWUS036NHA) I installed it "plug'n'play". You see I use the Synaptic Package Manager of Debian and it has a search feature. The CDs were never necessary. The RealTek driver is in the repository as "firmware-realtek" and Atheros drivers are stored "firmware-ath9k-htc" and "firmware-atheros" and "firmware-linux-free" and "firmware-zd1211".MediaTek drivers are stored in "firmware-misc-nonfree" which I already had loaded.

Good for wifi pentest

Ordered This adapter as a replacement for my awu036nh because it was supposed to be long range. It's not, it has about 1/2 the signal strength.The I have is a replacement for one that was defective. It has the very same issues. LED doesn't work, no driver disk and no power, WiFi signal just sucks. I'm not going to send this one back, it's too much work. I'll just toss it in the pile of scrap electronics I have

Works well over a greater distance than the average wifi device.