3 ms·

Not entirely true, you can get ath9k_htc cards that will do 300mbit/sec 802.11a on both the 5ghz and 2.4ghz bands. You have to look hard. It's basically only

Not entirely true, you can get ath9k_htc cards that will do 300mbit/sec 802.11a on both the 5ghz and 2.4ghz bands. You have to look hard. It's basically only Atheros 9280 that can do all that with FOSS firmware. You also have to make sure the device has TWO RF front end chips (one for each band). Just looking for "AR9280" will get you a lot of single-band products. There are also devices with that chip plus an AR7010, which is a nifty little USB-to-PCie bridge so the whole thing fits on a USB stick, like this: https://deviwiki.com/wiki/Sony_UWA-BR100 https://deviwiki.com/wiki/Sony_UWA-BR100

zamadatix 5y ago
The AR9280 is 13 years old, closer to the initial 802.11 Wi-Fi standard released in 1997 than now. The thing is the definition of only ancient Wi-Fi chips having libre/open firmware. Also I think you meant 802.11n, while the card does support 802.11a that is 54 Mbps on 5 GHz only.
- octoberfranklin 5y ago
  wlx00a096****** IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"XXXXXXXX" Mode:Managed Frequency:5.18 GHz Access Point: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX Bit Rate=300 Mb/s Tx-Power=30 dBm Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Management:off Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-31 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 > The AR9280 is 13 years old They don't have an expiration date, you know. We aren't talking about fruit here. And yes, like everybody on planet earth other than the IEEE -- including the people at Qualcomm/Atheros who wrote the source code for my wifi card's firmware -- use "a" to mean "5ghz band". People need to abandon this silly crusade to insist that "5ghz band" does not have an 802.11 designator, as if it is a feature with no name or something.
  - wtallis 5y ago
    > People need to abandon this silly crusade to insist that "5ghz band" does not have an 802.11 designator, as if it is a feature with no name or something. The problem, which you're ignoring, is that there are multiple 802.11 standards for operating in the 5GHz band. Treating the oldest and slowest among them as if it's synonymous with all 5GHz WiFi is just plain wrong, because the successive standards for 5GHz WiFi have meaningful improvements in capability.
    - kelnos 5y ago
      I used to work for a networking hardware company, and it's been a while, but even through the 802.11n days, we all called the 2.4GHz band "g-band" and 5GHz band "a-band". (Granted the person you were replying to also said 300Mbps on 802.11a, which is of course not possible.)
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    Looks right, now turn off n support on either the client or AP and it'll drop to 54. Everybody stopped calling them the b/g-band and a-band just around 2010, when n had finalized+distributed and standards were no longer band specific. This isn't just the IEEE guys either it's everybody that hasn't stay on 2000's era Wi-Fi hardware in the 2020s. The driver for your 13 year old card wasn't rewritten from scratch for the day it came out so it's no surprise it still references them as such. Not rotting isn't the same thing as being new. The best it can do is hold steady to the age it came out at with whatever enhancements can be provided in firmware. Ignoring ac(1/2)/ax and 6 GHz there are also a litany of intermediate standards (hence the letter skips) many of which are relevant to all PHY standards. No matter how you slice it these things are ancient. That said it's great you can make it work for you though as there are no newer alternatives to fall back to.
pabs3 5y ago
Hmm, that isn't going to do WiFi 6E though? Are there any USB-3 devices like that?

zamadatix 5y ago

The AR9280 is 13 years old, closer to the initial 802.11 Wi-Fi standard released in 1997 than now. The thing is the definition of only ancient Wi-Fi chips having libre/open firmware. Also I think you meant 802.11n, while the card does support 802.11a that is 54 Mbps on 5 GHz only.

octoberfranklin 5y ago
wlx00a096****** IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"XXXXXXXX" Mode:Managed Frequency:5.18 GHz Access Point: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX Bit Rate=300 Mb/s Tx-Power=30 dBm Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Management:off Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-31 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 > The AR9280 is 13 years old They don't have an expiration date, you know. We aren't talking about fruit here. And yes, like everybody on planet earth other than the IEEE -- including the people at Qualcomm/Atheros who wrote the source code for my wifi card's firmware -- use "a" to mean "5ghz band". People need to abandon this silly crusade to insist that "5ghz band" does not have an 802.11 designator, as if it is a feature with no name or something.
- wtallis 5y ago
  > People need to abandon this silly crusade to insist that "5ghz band" does not have an 802.11 designator, as if it is a feature with no name or something. The problem, which you're ignoring, is that there are multiple 802.11 standards for operating in the 5GHz band. Treating the oldest and slowest among them as if it's synonymous with all 5GHz WiFi is just plain wrong, because the successive standards for 5GHz WiFi have meaningful improvements in capability.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    I used to work for a networking hardware company, and it's been a while, but even through the 802.11n days, we all called the 2.4GHz band "g-band" and 5GHz band "a-band". (Granted the person you were replying to also said 300Mbps on 802.11a, which is of course not possible.)
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Looks right, now turn off n support on either the client or AP and it'll drop to 54. Everybody stopped calling them the b/g-band and a-band just around 2010, when n had finalized+distributed and standards were no longer band specific. This isn't just the IEEE guys either it's everybody that hasn't stay on 2000's era Wi-Fi hardware in the 2020s. The driver for your 13 year old card wasn't rewritten from scratch for the day it came out so it's no surprise it still references them as such. Not rotting isn't the same thing as being new. The best it can do is hold steady to the age it came out at with whatever enhancements can be provided in firmware. Ignoring ac(1/2)/ax and 6 GHz there are also a litany of intermediate standards (hence the letter skips) many of which are relevant to all PHY standards. No matter how you slice it these things are ancient. That said it's great you can make it work for you though as there are no newer alternatives to fall back to.

pabs3 5y ago

Hmm, that isn't going to do WiFi 6E though? Are there any USB-3 devices like that?