experience with 5GHz USB radio in ad-hoc mode?

[Carlos Rey-Moreno]

Good morning,

Anyone has experience with 5GHz USB radios operating in ad-hoc mode that can be easily added to the MP02?

Thanks in advance,

carlos

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Carlos Rey-Moreno
Research Assistant
Office 1.28
Department of Computer Science
University of the Western Cape
Private Bag X17 - Bellville, 7535
Cape Town - South Africa
Tel: +27 (0) 21 959 2562 Cel: +27 (0) 76 986 3633
Skype: carlos.reymoreno Twitter: Creym

[T Gillett]

Hi Carlos

There is some information about this on the VT Wiki page here:

     http://wiki.villagetelco.org/Using_USB_WiFi_Devices_for_Dual_Radio

I have tested the TP Link TL-WDN3200  and the Netgear WNDA4100 devices operating adhoc mesh at 5GHz.

These devices can operate at either 2.4 or 5GHz.

They have internal antennas and limited TxPower, so don't expect them to operate over long distances.

For the future: The MP2 AWD which is currently in design has an option to add a 5GHz module which is 2T2R and has TxPower of 12dBm and internal 5dBi antennas., with the option to connect external antennas.

Regards

Terry 

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[Carlos Rey-Moreno]

Thanks a lot Terry! I checked it, but the ones operating on 5GHz does not allow the connection of an external antenna.

I've seen this one, where you can set the power up to 20dBm and comes with external connectors: http://dl.ubnt.com/sr71usb_datasheet.pdf and its driver, carl9170, seems to work fine in ad hoc mode for openwrt. Another one that seems promising is the Alfa AWUS051NH, which has an output of 27dBm, and can be used with the rt2800usb driver.

Best,

carlos

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[T Gillett]

Hi Carlos

Both those devices look interesting.

I have tested 2.4GHz Alfa devices that use the rt2800 driver and they work OK so I expect the 5GHz one will be similar.

Regards

Terry

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[Paul Ruvolo]

Hi Terry,

Could you provide more detail on your setup running TP LINK TL-WDN3200 using 5Ghz adhoc mode?  I am trying to get this to work on Raspbian but I have no luck.  I can connect to 5Ghz channels in infrastructure mode, and I can do 2.4 Ghz ad-hoc.  Is there some driver setting I have to change?  I seemed to find some information that this works in Windows.

Any details you can provide would be much appreciated.

Best,

Paul

[T Gillett]

Hi Paul

Interesting. 

It is a while since I worked on this and we did initial testing on a bunch of devices, but as I recall there was not an issue around adhoc on 5GHz, but let me check the operation of the WND3200 specifically and refresh my memory.

As I recall, the WDN3200 uses the Ralink  (rt2800-lib and rt2800-usb) driver in OpenWrt. 

Is that the same driver in Raspbian?

Meanwhile, there is some information on the VT Wiki here:

    http://wiki.villagetelco.org/Using_USB_WiFi_Devices_for_Dual_Radio

And the source code, specifically the wireless config is on GitHub here:

    https://github.com/villagetelco/vt-firmware/tree/secn_3.0-Duo/SECN-build/files/etc/config

Regards

Terry

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[T Gillett]

Hi Paul

To test the 5GHz AdHoc interface operation I set up an MP02 device running the SECN Duo firmware with a TP Link WDN3200 device plugged in as the second radio.

It was configured to have the internal radio (radio0 / phy1 / wlan0) running as an AP on channel 1 and the USB radio(radio1 / phy0 / wlan1-1) running AdHoc on channel 40 to support the batman-adv interface.

For the test it was meshed with a dual radio TP Link WDR4300 with its 5GHz radio configured as AdHoc for the batman-adv mesh.

All is well with the AdHoc interface on the WDN3200 as you can see from the outputs below.

To change bands on the WDN3200 in OpenWrt with the rt-2800 driver, it is just a matter of setting the channel number. Channels 1 - 13 are 2.4GHz and the higher channels (36 up in our config) are 5GHz.

A radical thought, but depending on what you are doing, if you can't get it going under Raspbian, you might consider running OpenWrt on the RPi.

Regards

Terry

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OpenWrt Barrier Breaker 14.07 r43889 Dragino
Village Telco - Small Enterprise Campus Network
Version:     SECN-3_0-BB-Alpha10d-Duo MP02 Duo
Build date:  2015-03-10-15:34
GitHub:      vt-firmware secn_3.0Alpha10-Duo-12-gc287ceec8f
 

root@MP2-20:/# iw dev
phy#1
        Interface wlan0
                ifindex 8
                wdev 0x100000002
                addr a8:40:41:13:78:e4
                ssid VT-SECN-AP
                type AP
                channel 1 (2412 MHz), width: 20 MHz, center1: 2412 MHz
phy#0
        Interface wlan1-1
                ifindex 7
                wdev 0x2
                addr 14:cc:20:16:bc:97
                ssid vt-mesh
                type IBSS
                channel 40 (5200 MHz), width: 20 MHz, center1: 5200 MHz

root@MP2-20:/# batctl o
[B.A.T.M.A.N. adv 2014.2.0, MainIF/MAC: wlan1-1/14:cc:20:16:bc:97 (bat0 BATMAN_IV)]
  Originator      last-seen (#/255)           Nexthop [outgoingIF]:   Potential nexthops ...
90:f6:52:f2:6a:66    0.530s   (255) 90:f6:52:f2:6a:66 [   wlan1-1]: 90:f6:52:f2:6a:66 (255)

root@MP2-20:/# iwinfo
wlan0     ESSID: "VT-SECN-AP"
          Access Point: A8:40:41:13:78:E4
          Mode: Master  Channel: 1 (2.412 GHz)
          Tx-Power: 17 dBm  Link Quality: unknown/70
          Signal: unknown  Noise: -95 dBm
          Bit Rate: unknown
          Encryption: WPA2 PSK (CCMP)
          Type: nl80211  HW Mode(s): 802.11bgn
          Hardware: unknown [Generic MAC80211]
          TX power offset: unknown
          Frequency offset: unknown
          Supports VAPs: yes  PHY name: phy1

wlan1-1   ESSID: "vt-mesh"
          Access Point: 02:CA:FF:EE:BA:BE
          Mode: Ad-Hoc  Channel: 40 (5.200 GHz)
          Tx-Power: 17 dBm  Link Quality: 40/70
          Signal: -70 dBm  Noise: unknown
          Bit Rate: 86.7 MBit/s
          Encryption: unknown
          Type: nl80211  HW Mode(s): 802.11abgn
          Hardware: unknown [Generic MAC80211]
          TX power offset: unknown
          Frequency offset: unknown
          Supports VAPs: yes  PHY name: phy0

root@MP2-20:/# cat /etc/config/wireless

config wifi-device 'radio0'
        option type 'mac80211'
        option htmode 'HT20'
        option channel '1'
        option txpower '17'
        option chanbw '20'
        option disabled '0'
        option phy 'phy1'

config wifi-iface 'ap_0'
        option device 'radio0'
        option ifname 'wlan0'
        option network 'lan'
        option mode 'ap'
        option maxassoc '20'
        option ssid 'VT-SECN-AP'
        option encryption 'psk2'
        option key 'potato-potato'
        option hidden '0'
        option disabled '0'
        option isolate '0'


config wifi-device 'radio1'
        option type 'mac80211'
        option htmode 'HT20'
        option chanbw '20'
        option txpower '17'
        option disabled '0'
        option phy 'phy0'
        option channel '40'

config wifi-iface 'ah_1'
        option device 'radio1'
        option network 'mesh_0'
        option ifname 'wlan1-1'
        option mode 'adhoc'
        option encryption 'none'
        option bssid '02:CA:FF:EE:BA:BE'
        option hidden '0'
        option ssid 'vt-mesh'
        option disabled '0'

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 9:34 AM, Paul Ruvolo <paullun...@gmail.com> wrote:

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