[gentoo-user] {OT} 802.11n PCI-E 300Mbps with AP mode?

Grant

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Jul 11, 2011, 11:30:01 PM7/11/11

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I'm planning to get one of these to act as a wireless bridge between
my modem and Gentoo router:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=33-127-256

I'll need an 802.11n PCI-E card that does 300Mbps and works in AP mode
for the router. Does anyone know of such a card? I've read that
these 300 Mbps cards use Realtek chips and don't work in AP mode
although that info could be outdated:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320048
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=33-166-063

This one is said to be an Atheros chip so it should have better
support but it only goes to 150Mbps:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704059

- Grant

Paul Hartman

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Jul 12, 2011, 4:10:01 PM7/12/11

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On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 9:59 PM, Grant <email...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll need an 802.11n PCI-E card that does 300Mbps and works in AP mode
> for the router. Does anyone know of such a card? I've read that
> these 300 Mbps cards use Realtek chips and don't work in AP mode
> although that info could be outdated:

Check out the table here:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers

It will let you see which drivers have AP support as well as 802.11n
support. There are a couple others with some AP support, but basically
an ath9k-supported chipset is your only choice at the moment for a
mature AP mode, as far as I know.

> This one is said to be an Atheros chip so it should have better
> support but it only goes to 150Mbps:

Without the 5 GHz band I doubt you'd ever see above 150Mbps anyway.
It's more of a theoretical max for 2.4 GHz but I wouldn't expect to
see it actually happen, unless you live in a land without wireless
interference. :) My AP and all clients claim to support 300Mbps but
I've never seen it with my own eyes.

I don't notice much of a speed difference at all between the 802.11g
turbo modes (108 Mbps+) and 802.11n in my house. Both are noticeably
faster than plain old 54Mbit 802.11g, though.

Grant

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Jul 12, 2011, 10:20:01 PM7/12/11

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Thanks Paul. I'm working on it and I'll post here if I find one.

Should I need only one wireless card in my router to connect to both
the clients and a wireless bridge which is connected to the WAN?

- Grant

Paul Hartman

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Jul 13, 2011, 11:20:02 AM7/13/11

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On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:29 PM, Grant <email...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Should I need only one wireless card in my router to connect to both
> the clients and a wireless bridge which is connected to the WAN?

I think you need 2 cards in your router (one as host and one as client
to the wireless WAN bridge), unless you use WDS.

WDS allows your access points to become repeaters while still
functioning as access points, so you can have multiple APs and only
one of them needs to be connected to the wired network (as long as
each AP is within range of at least one other AP).

The cost of WDS this is that your available bandwidth is basically
halved (and if you have to support 802.11b, it gets even slower).
Depending on your expected usage, that might or might not be a big
deal.

Grant

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Jul 13, 2011, 2:10:02 PM7/13/11

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>> Should I need only one wireless card in my router to connect to both
>> the clients and a wireless bridge which is connected to the WAN?
>
> I think you need 2 cards in your router (one as host and one as client
> to the wireless WAN bridge), unless you use WDS.

Got it, thanks Paul. That's good news because it means I can use any
802.11n PCIe 300Mbps card with Linux drivers instead of worrying about
AP mode. I'll just use a 802.11g card in AP mode until there is
better support for 802.11n. The router uses most of the bandwidth
from the WAN.

- Grant

Adam Carter

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Jul 13, 2011, 7:40:02 PM7/13/11

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> Got it, thanks Paul. That's good news because it means I can use any
> 802.11n PCIe 300Mbps card with Linux drivers instead of worrying about
> AP mode. I'll just use a 802.11g card in AP mode until there is
> better support for 802.11n. The router uses most of the bandwidth
> from the WAN.

Hi Grant,

I bought the TPLink WN951N (atheros AR5008, ath9k) card after it being
recommended by a gentoo-user list member. I concur with the
recommendation. Its cheap and seems to work well in linux. I have, at
times, had scp report 3.5M/s, but its quite variable. There are a
bunch of APs in my area though. Here's some details - I dont know if
the AP configuration is optimal - I didnt find the documentation very
clear.

Here's what's reported as the
Wiphy phy0
Band 1:
HT capabilities: 0x104e
* 20/40 MHz operation
* SM PS disabled
* 40 MHz short GI
* max A-MSDU len 3839
* DSSS/CCK 40 MHz
HT A-MPDU factor: 0x0003 (65535 bytes)
HT A-MPDU density: 0x0006 (8 usec)

And i've configured my hostapd.conf;
hw_mode=g
wme_enabled=1
ieee80211n=1
ht_capab=[SHORT-GI-40][DSSS_CCK-40]

HTH

Grant

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Jul 13, 2011, 7:50:01 PM7/13/11

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Thank you. It looks like you are using it in AP mode but in 802.11g
mode. Is that the case? I'm also curious if it can operate in both
the 2.4 and 5Ghz bands?

- Grant

Adam Carter

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Jul 13, 2011, 8:10:01 PM7/13/11

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> Thank you. It looks like you are using it in AP mode but in 802.11g
> mode. Is that the case? I'm also curious if it can operate in both
> the 2.4 and 5Ghz bands?

Sorry - dont know how to tell if can use 2.4 and 5.

Adam Carter

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Jul 13, 2011, 8:10:02 PM7/13/11

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> Thank you. It looks like you are using it in AP mode but in 802.11g
> mode. Is that the case? I'm also curious if it can operate in both
> the 2.4 and 5Ghz bands?

Its certainly counter-intuitive, but that's what I found when I
searched N configuration. I have had better than 54M bit rates
reported, so despite the G its working as N. I think....

Paul Hartman

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Jul 13, 2011, 8:20:02 PM7/13/11

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It supports 2.4GHz only.

Grant

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Jul 14, 2011, 11:30:02 PM7/14/11

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>>> Thank you. It looks like you are using it in AP mode but in 802.11g
>>> mode. Is that the case? I'm also curious if it can operate in both
>>> the 2.4 and 5Ghz bands?
>>
>> Sorry - dont know how to tell if can use 2.4 and 5.
>
> It supports 2.4GHz only.

Thanks, I went with a Ubiquiti SR71-E (ath9k) and miniPCIe->PCIe
adapter. miniPCIe cards seem to be the only well-supported ones with
a really full feature set.

- Grant

Stroller

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Jul 15, 2011, 11:00:01 AM7/15/11

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On 15 July 2011, at 04:18, Grant wrote:
> ...

> Thanks, I went with a Ubiquiti SR71-E (ath9k) and miniPCIe->PCIe
> adapter. miniPCIe cards seem to be the only well-supported ones with
> a really full feature set.

The market for miniPCIe wifi cards is surely much *much* larger than for full-sized PCIe ones.

Every new laptop needs a wifi card, and that'll be miniPCIe. If someone is adding wifi to their desktop, then they'll probably use a USB NIC.

When the manufacturer is already making lots of miniPCIe cards, what's the point of making full-sized PCIe cards, which will hardly sell? Especially when they're the same bus with a different form-factor, and a "convertor card" like you've bought can be bought or manufactured cheaply.

Stroller.

Peter Humphrey

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Jul 15, 2011, 12:30:02 PM7/15/11

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On Friday 15 July 2011 15:53:28 Stroller wrote:

> Every new laptop needs a wifi card, and that'll be miniPCIe. If someone
> is adding wifi to their desktop, then they'll probably use a USB NIC.
>
> When the manufacturer is already making lots of miniPCIe cards, what's
> the point of making full-sized PCIe cards, which will hardly sell?

I'd have thought it was the other way round: every laptop has wifi built in
already, whereas most desktops don't.

--
Rgds
Peter

Michael Mol

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Jul 15, 2011, 12:40:01 PM7/15/11

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"built-in" wifi generally comes in the form of a miniPCI or miniPCIe card.

--
:wq