On 14/05/2019 14:17, John Foust via cctalk wrote:
At 03:02 AM 5/14/2019, Christian Corti via cctalk wrote:
On Mon, 13 May 2019, Grant Taylor wrote:
"Gaming adapters" take a wired computer and connect it to a wireless network.

That "adapter" has always been called a WLAN or wireless bridge.

I've known the term "gaming adapter" because I knew it was the common
name for what I'd call a dedicated wireless network bridge.  Just another
fine example of how gaming has come to dominate parts of the computer world.
They who sell the most get to name the thing.

But they probably don't. Almost every smart TV and settop box manufacturer sells a wired-to-wireless bridge dongle, and I'd bet there are more "wireless adapters" or "network adapters" sold for that purpose rather than gaming, simply because TVs, settop boxes and DVD/BluRay players outsell gaming machines. And then there are the slightly more sophisticated/robust ones sold by the likes of 3Com and Cisco, which I've never seen called anything other than a "wireless bridge".

There are two or three groups at my university who regularly organise gaming parties, or sometimes called "LAN parties" here, and plenty of ad-hoc groups who also do so since the word got round that IT Services was willing to provide some support for them. I've never heard the term "gaming adapter" from them. Perhaps it's a piece of localised jargon. The AV Services department, who use quite a lot of them for large TV screens in lecture theatres, for remote lectures, teleconferencing, as bulletin boards, etc always call them "wireless adapters" or sometimes "network adapters".

When "gaming adapter" was first mentioned, one of the first things that came to mind was the joystick-shaped gadget that fits over a keyboard to press the up/down/left/right keys when you waggle it. Searching "gaming adapter" throws up a lot of USB wireless dongles before wired Ethernet ones. I don't really care what you or Grant call it yourself, but at best the term is confusing, given it can mean at least two other things, and it's certainly not any sort of canonical name as has been suggested.

--
Pete
Pete Turnbull

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