unmount - Safely unmounting a Netgear Wireless USB adapter

I have a NetGear WNA3100M(v1) Wireless-N 300 adapter, and it sort of works. That is, the speed annoyingly often drops down to just a few Mbit/s.

I find if I disconnect from my connection, unplug the N-300, plug it back in again, and wait for my computer to reconnect, the speed usually goes back to normal, which I know to be 30-40 Mbit/s.

Should I however unmount the USB adapter before I plug it out? It does not turn up as a USB drive in the file manager, so I can not right click it and choose unmount. On the other hand, it does turn up in the system tray in Windows 10, and from there I can safely eject it, before unplugging it.

I know Ubuntu is not Windows, and all that, but since I unplug the adapter quite often, it's important to know if I need to unmount it to prevent it from becoming corrupt, as in the case of USB memory sticks.

I'm also asking how to unmount it, if I need to do that from the terminal, since it's nowhere to be seen in the GUI - the system tray or file manager. I have searched this forum (related questions and more) as well as googling, but couldn't find a clear and cut procedure on how to do this.

The output of lsusb:

thelinox@thelinox-desktop:~$ lsusb | grep 'Wireless'
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0846:9021 NetGear, Inc. WNA3100M(v1)

Wireless-N 300 [Realtek RTL8192CU]

My OS is Ubuntu Studio 15.10.

Mounting and unmounting only apply to USB devices that have some sort of storage feature that the computer can access and edit. A thumb drive is an example of this. Unmounting just ensures that nothing is using the drive when you unplug it, avoiding file corruption.

AFAIK, USB wireless adapters have no accessible storage on them, meaning there's nothing to unmount, as there was nothing to mount in the first place. You don't unmount your mouse before you unplug it, right? ;-).

Unless you have a weird hybrid USB storage/WiFi device, un/mounting doesn't apply at all.

There does seem to be some problem with your adapter setup, though, since it drops in speed like that. Try Jeremy's answer and, if it doesn't work, make a new question about that.