That would be a WiFi USB dongle you plug into a USB port if your PC doesn't have WiFi built in.

And yes brand name dongles use brand name chip sets with half-decent components on the radio part, so I'm not surprised if it works better than no name dongles...

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.

After my Laptop ground to a spectacular halt, (See photo yesterday)and any repairs were going to cost more in parts than anything else, I've extracted the hard drive and saved everything off. Network connection was made using  whatever spare equipment I had hanging about onto the desktop, which turned out to be an unbranded usb wireless lump. This lump is a touch unreliable, depending on where people are standing in other rooms, or what furniture is where. The signal strength through the two walls to where the  broadband router is runs to about 50% at best, so connections fail, regularly.

So today a trip down to the local Big box computer hardware supermarket was arranged (and after looking at the eye-watering prices, a trip next door to Maplins  where the same items were available at far less pocket bursting prices.

What I brought was a netgear USB wireless piece (A wg111) to match the wireless router that  im running my connection through (Your best buying the same make of wireless card or usb lump as you will generally get a much more reliable signal)

Cheap network hardware is always a pain.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Yes, cable modem. My phone line is like yours. They upgraded it recently so it could handle 4MB. <oooooooooh>