4 ms·

Is it a real wifi? Or is it the same old ax200 story with AP only in 2.4GHz mode? https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000030429/wireless.h

by megous 3y ago

Is it a real wifi? Or is it the same old ax200 story with AP only in 2.4GHz mode? https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000030429/wireless.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000... I prefer real WiFi.

zamadatix 3y ago
I believe it's another client only card. For the AP side I'd recommend a Qualcomm 4x4 but it's unlikely to fit in laptops.
- megous 3y ago
  Realtek RTL8922A and RTL8952A based cards will support AP mode, I'm sure. The driver (rtw89) got upstreamed a while ago and support for the new chip got added this Linux kernel release cycle. Hopefully the new generation modules will be available soon, too... I use the previous generation RTL8852A in my homegrown wifi router, and it works nicely as AP with the same driver and hostapd. The modules are small, and fit to laptops. (the ones I buy are actually some stock for laptops, that gets re-sold as spare parts I think) Cheaper than the Qualcomm wifi chips, too.
  - zamadatix 3y ago
    Yeah plenty of client cards have AP mode firmware, I don't recommend it though unless you want a particularly low end AP (outside of the use case of a fully open firmware AP, in which case fully open firmware older cards are generally the only way).
    - megous 3y ago
      Do you have any specifics for these particular devices? Have you inspected the driver and firmware and found it lacking? Or did you test them and something came up? Internet is full of bad experiences, but mostly from windows laptop users and from 2-3 years ago, around the time the driver was being upstreamed to Linux. It has been solid and growing in features ever since. Throughtput is pretty nice 500mbit/s for a single 80MHz channel setup I'm using and stable. There's no other choice for actively manufacturer supported wifi device usable for AP for Linux anyway. Broadcom drivers are unsupported for years, and firmware heavy with lack of firmware updates from manufacturer. Bad combo. Intel is not for APs. And that's about it.

by megous 3y ago

zamadatix 3y ago

I believe it's another client only card. For the AP side I'd recommend a Qualcomm 4x4 but it's unlikely to fit in laptops.

megous 3y ago
Realtek RTL8922A and RTL8952A based cards will support AP mode, I'm sure. The driver (rtw89) got upstreamed a while ago and support for the new chip got added this Linux kernel release cycle. Hopefully the new generation modules will be available soon, too... I use the previous generation RTL8852A in my homegrown wifi router, and it works nicely as AP with the same driver and hostapd. The modules are small, and fit to laptops. (the ones I buy are actually some stock for laptops, that gets re-sold as spare parts I think) Cheaper than the Qualcomm wifi chips, too.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  Yeah plenty of client cards have AP mode firmware, I don't recommend it though unless you want a particularly low end AP (outside of the use case of a fully open firmware AP, in which case fully open firmware older cards are generally the only way).
  - megous 3y ago
    Do you have any specifics for these particular devices? Have you inspected the driver and firmware and found it lacking? Or did you test them and something came up? Internet is full of bad experiences, but mostly from windows laptop users and from 2-3 years ago, around the time the driver was being upstreamed to Linux. It has been solid and growing in features ever since. Throughtput is pretty nice 500mbit/s for a single 80MHz channel setup I'm using and stable. There's no other choice for actively manufacturer supported wifi device usable for AP for Linux anyway. Broadcom drivers are unsupported for years, and firmware heavy with lack of firmware updates from manufacturer. Bad combo. Intel is not for APs. And that's about it.