USB wireless adapter for hostapd?

Carl Johnson

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Oct 20, 2015, 11:45:32 PM10/20/15

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I am trying to set up a Raspberry Pi as an access point, but FreeBSD
doesn't support hostap mode on the adapters (urtwn) that I have. Does
anybody have any suggestions on where I could buy an adapter that
FreeBSD does support hostap mode? Looking at the man pages seems to
indicate that very few are supported for anything other than normal
station mode.

Thanks for any information.
--
Carl Johnson ca...@peak.org

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Malcolm Matalka

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Oct 21, 2015, 2:27:42 AM10/21/15

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Carl Johnson <ca...@peak.org> writes:

> I am trying to set up a Raspberry Pi as an access point, but FreeBSD
> doesn't support hostap mode on the adapters (urtwn) that I have. Does
> anybody have any suggestions on where I could buy an adapter that
> FreeBSD does support hostap mode? Looking at the man pages seems to
> indicate that very few are supported for anything other than normal
> station mode.
>
> Thanks for any information.

I've had success with this:

http://www.modmypi.com/raspberry-pi/accessories/wifi-dongles/wifi-dongle-nano-usb/?search=wifi

Basically, you need to find things with specific chipsets that support
hostedap. Ralink 5370 is one of them.

However, I've had trouble getting more than 80KB/s out (although I can
max out the in at ~1MB/s) of this on my RPi1. I'm not sure where the
problem is because I just don't know enough about it, perhaps someone
else knows how to debug/tune it.

Carl Johnson

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Oct 21, 2015, 11:53:01 AM10/21/15

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"Michael B. Eichorn" <i...@michaeleichorn.com> writes:

> On Tue, 2015-10-20 at 20:41 -0700, Carl Johnson wrote:
>> I am trying to set up a Raspberry Pi as an access point, but FreeBSD
>> doesn't support hostap mode on the adapters (urtwn) that I have. Does
>> anybody have any suggestions on where I could buy an adapter that
>> FreeBSD does support hostap mode? Looking at the man pages seems to
>> indicate that very few are supported for anything other than normal
>> station mode.
>>
>> Thanks for any information.
>

> Perhaps run(4)? Never used it myself as I prefer PCIe bus networking but
> it mentions hostAP.

Thanks, I had already seen run(4) but the problem is knowing which
adapters contain that chipset and where I could buy one.

Carl Johnson

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Oct 21, 2015, 11:59:12 AM10/21/15

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Malcolm Matalka <mmat...@gmail.com> writes:

> Carl Johnson <ca...@peak.org> writes:
>
>> I am trying to set up a Raspberry Pi as an access point, but FreeBSD
>> doesn't support hostap mode on the adapters (urtwn) that I have. Does
>> anybody have any suggestions on where I could buy an adapter that
>> FreeBSD does support hostap mode? Looking at the man pages seems to
>> indicate that very few are supported for anything other than normal
>> station mode.
>>
>> Thanks for any information.
>
>
> I've had success with this:
>
> http://www.modmypi.com/raspberry-pi/accessories/wifi-dongles/wifi-dongle-nano-usb/?search=wifi

That looks good, but I would prefer to find a US supplier so that I
don't have to place an international order.

> Basically, you need to find things with specific chipsets that support
> hostedap. Ralink 5370 is one of them.

The problem is that most adapters don't say what chipset is in them.

> However, I've had trouble getting more than 80KB/s out (although I can
> max out the in at ~1MB/s) of this on my RPi1. I'm not sure where the
> problem is because I just don't know enough about it, perhaps someone
> else knows how to debug/tune it.

Sorry, but I can't help with that. Thanks for your information.

--
Carl Johnson ca...@peak.org

Vladimir Botka

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Nov 12, 2015, 2:15:26 PM11/12/15

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Hi,

On Tue, 20 Oct 2015 20:41:26 -0700
Carl Johnson <ca...@peak.org> wrote:

> I am trying to set up a Raspberry Pi as an access point, but FreeBSD
> doesn't support hostap mode on the adapters (urtwn) that I have. Does
> anybody have any suggestions on where I could buy an adapter that
> FreeBSD does support hostap mode? Looking at the man pages seems to
> indicate that very few are supported for anything other than normal
> station mode.
>
> Thanks for any information.

You are looking for adapters with HOSTAP capability [1] according
http://www.freebsd.cz/doc/handbook/network-wireless.html

This report [1] is from old dongle D-Link DWL-G122 running as a client
[2,3] in FreeBSD 11.0 on imx6. I haven't tried, but according [1] it
should be possible to use it with hostap.

JFYI, RT5370 (Tenda W311MI) and RT5592 (TP Link TL-WDN3200) don't work
for me in [4] and report error (below). But both adapters report HOSTAP
capability in Freebsd 10.2 i386

imx6 kernel: run0: firmware RT3071 ver. 0.33 loaded
imx6 wpa_supplicant[2164]: ioctl[SIOCS80211, op=26, val=0,
arg_len=0]: Operation not supported
imx6 wpa_supplicant[2164]: ioctl[SIOCS80211, op=26, val=0,
arg_len=0]: Operation not supported
imx6 wpa_supplicant[2164]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-TERMINATING

Just to be sure. You know that USB adapters don't support 11n at the
moment?

HTH. Cheers

-vlado

[1]
# ifconfig wlan0 list caps
drivercaps=2581ed01<STA,IBSS,HOSTAP,AHDEMO,TXPMGT,SHSLOT,SHPREAMBLE,MONITOR,WPA1,WPA2,WME,BGSCAN>
cryptocaps=1b<WEP,TKIP,AES_CCM,TKIPMIC>

[2]
# usbconfig -u 1 -a 3 dump_info
ugen1.3: <802.11 bg WLAN Ralink> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH
(480Mbps) pwr=ON (300mA)

[3]
# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu
1500 ether 00:17:9a:b7:ff:be
inet 192.168.1.22 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
groups: wlan
ssid babeta channel 1 (2412 MHz 11g) bssid c4:3d:c7:9d:a6:ef
regdomain ETSI country CZ authmode WPA2/802.11i privacy ON
deftxkey UNDEF AES-CCM 2:128-bit AES-CCM 3:128-bit txpower 30
bmiss 7 scanvalid 60 bgscan bgscanintvl 300 bgscanidle 250 roam:rssi 7
roam:rate 5 protmode CTS wme roaming MANUAL
media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet DS/1Mbps mode 11g
status: associated
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>

[4]
# uname -a
FreeBSD imx6 11.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 11.0-CURRENT #0 r290273: Tue Nov 3
02:54:03 UTC 2015
ro...@releng2.nyi.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/arm.armv6/usr/src/sys/IMX6 arm
--
Vladimír Botka

Carl Johnson

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Nov 12, 2015, 11:57:45 PM11/12/15

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No, I didn't know that. I was wondering why my speeds weren't very good
right now. I bought a couple of Ralink RT3071 based adapters and they
seem to work reasonably well, but not as fast as I was hoping. I am
getting only about 12Mb/sec now according to iperf3, but I don't really
need faster speeds.

Thanks for your information.

Adrian Chadd

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Nov 14, 2015, 10:54:41 PM11/14/15

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hiya,

The urtwn driver is getting some hostap love right now. That's likely
your best bet in the medium term.

-a

Carl Johnson

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Nov 15, 2015, 12:53:32 AM11/15/15

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Adrian Chadd <adrian...@gmail.com> writes:

> hiya,
>
> The urtwn driver is getting some hostap love right now. That's likely
> your best bet in the medium term.
>

Thank you! That is some good news.