Which wifi card is better for Kali? ALFA AWUS036NHA or AWUS036NHR ?

[clearday]

Unless you're only going to test WEP, any card based on 8192CU chipset is crippled for aircrack. It cannot detect clients, therefore it is incapable of deauthentication and capturing WPA handshake.

The only thing the NHR is good for is surfing the internet.

As for the 036H and NH, use wifite to troubleshoot your setup. Another good way to troubleshoot is to use a liveCD to isolate the problem. Execute the commands to see if the cards behave the same way.

I picked up a few Alfas a few months ago out of curiousity. I have the 036H V5, 036NH, and the 036NHR. I have tested them in both BT5 R3 and Kali with the same results.

• The 036H worked right out of the box but it has its quirks. It has freezing issues. Sometimes the card or the driver freezes while doing an ARP replay. Most of the time, it just freezes while Airodump keeps logging IVs. Eventually it frees itself up but Aireplay gives a wifiError() or something causing the ARP replay to stop. You can just start it again. There was one time it locked up the entire laptop requiring a hard reboot.
  
• The 036NH also works out of the box and again it has its quirks. I can't remember if the LED worked properly on it or not. Also I think you can't bring the card down using ifconfig, it errors out. It also has freezing issues. Multiple times it has froze in the middle of an ARP replay and doesn't recover. All the terminals show wifiNetworkDown() or some weird error.
  
• The 036NHR is a very frustrating card. I haven't gotten it to work 100% yet and may not try again for a while. I originally played with it in BT5 R3. It didn't really work out of the box. It didn't channel hop, wouldn't show associations, wouldn't show handshakes, wouldn't inject, couldn't increase the txpower over 20, and wouldn't connect to any WPA networks (bad password error). I tried the compat-wireless drivers (the ones before the name change) and fixed some of the issues. I followed a post on the old forums which solved the channel hopping and txpower issues. I got it to actually inject with an ARP replay but it was extremely slow, something like 8 pps before it locked up the laptop requiring a hard reboot. I tried multiple driver versions including the newest ones after the name change. I ended up having no working wifi drivers probably because of my sheer stupidity and ended up installing Kali. The issues remained and I eventually reinstalled BT5 R3 because I couldn't get the ATI driver working for use with Pyrit and Calpp, probably because of being a complete noob to Debian. Still waiting for a proper solution. Shame because the card works well in Windows.

I am by no means any sort of expert or even intermediate level at Linux so I'm hoping somebody else with a little more skills can get the NHR working properly.

[Chrifister]

The 036H seems to be the most stable, and sensitive. I've been using it the most.

Is the NHR crippled because of a hardware limitation or software(firmware or driver) issue? It does work quite well in Windows. I just find it odd that it is capable of monitor mode and even injection but offers such poor performance and instability. I was hoping to hold on to it until they got the driver sorted out but I may end up selling it.

The other two cards work for my needs. I may do some troubleshooting when I have free time. The bugs are just annoying.

[clearday]

This thread might be able to help:

http://www.backtrack-linux.org/forums/showthread.php?t=45323&page=8

You will need to read through the postings to figure out what was done to make the card work.

The 036H seems to be the most stable, and sensitive. I've been using it the most.

Is the NHR crippled because of a hardware limitation or software(firmware or driver) issue? It does work quite well in Windows. I just find it odd that it is capable of monitor mode and even injection but offers such poor performance and instability. I was hoping to hold on to it until they got the driver sorted out but I may end up selling it.

The other two cards work for my needs. I may do some troubleshooting when I have free time. The bugs are just annoying.

[Chrifister]

Yeah I read through that. I think I combined the guide in that thread with another thread that fixed the channel hopping and txpower issues. I made a post towards the end of the thread describing my results. I can get the card to work but packet injection is so slow that it's useless (8 pps). I let it go for ten minutes and it froze and locked up the laptop. Was still having the bad password issue and the association issue. Not sure if I picked up any handshakes but it's unlikely considering the association issue.

Compat-wireless is now known as Compat-drivers and I think I tried random drivers up to the 3.7 release. No luck and I ended up losing wifi capability altogether somewhere. Perhaps some of the newer drivers work and I'm an idiot. I don't know. Was so frustrated with the card that I haven't played with it since.

[clearday]

Yep. I went through the same cycle of babysitting the NHR (8188/8192), wasting hours searching the internet for answers until I just got sick of it. People who have claimed 'success' seem to only get the WEP portion to work. I have not seen a single youtube video or tutorial with terminal output that demonstrate the NHR is capable of testing WPA at all.

However, I would love to be proven wrong. If anyone here could find evidence otherwise, please post it here or provide the link showing the step-by-step instructions.

Here is another link claiming success with the NHR and plug and play with Beini:

http://xiaopan.co/forums/threads/awu...rack-5-r3.911/

Yeah I read through that. I think I combined the guide in that thread with another thread that fixed the channel hopping and txpower issues. I made a post towards the end of the thread describing my results. I can get the card to work but packet injection is so slow that it's useless (8 pps). I let it go for ten minutes and it froze and locked up the laptop. Was still having the bad password issue and the association issue. Not sure if I picked up any handshakes but it's unlikely considering the association issue.

Compat-wireless is now known as Compat-drivers and I think I tried random drivers up to the 3.7 release. No luck and I ended up losing wifi capability altogether somewhere. Perhaps some of the newer drivers work and I'm an idiot. I don't know. Was so frustrated with the card that I haven't played with it since.

[Chrifister]

I'll keep checking every few days to see if there's any progress but if it doesn't look good in a few months, I'll probably sell it. I can make do with the H and NH.

[yamil]

I'll keep checking every few days to see if there's any progress but if it doesn't look good in a few months, I'll probably sell it. I can make do with the H and NH.

the nha is working beatifull ibought 1 and is working out the box with no problems at all. Works in everything with aircrack-ng and the others things is working perfect.