I've switched the black and white leads between the two terminals on the Wireless NIC of my laptop, but I haven't noticed any significant performance aberrations.
I've tested on both Windows 7 Home Premium and Ubuntu 10.10 (a separate HDD for each OS) and the basic performance seems to be the same. I haven't done any serious benchmarks, but I've compared the "Link Speed" column under the "Networking" tab of Windows Task Manager between the two terminal positions and don't recall there being a difference between them (TaskMgr at Run dialogue/CMD or CTRL+ALT+DEL). I say "recall" because I'm working based on my own memory, reason being that it never occurred to me that I should have recorded my Wireless Bandwidth and I forgot to record which lead went to which terminal when I dismantled my laptop for the first time.
The Wireless NIC is not integrated into the motherboard, rather, it's a separate card that has it's own interface to the motherboard. It's about 2"x1.25"x.25" with a tiny interface; sorry, I don't recall pin count or approximate size on it, since I worked on it so long ago and I've not had to contend with networking issues, so it hasn't been a pressing matter for me. I'll take a look if you need those details.
Some other particulars:
- Acer Aspire 5536-5142 Laptop
- 802.11 b/g/Draft-N NIC
- Average Link Speed: 150Mbps (Based on Unreliable, Human Memory)
So my question boils down to this: for the majority/all laptops on the market, are the black and white antenna leads, from the monitor, safely interchangeable on the terminals of the WLAN NIC?
