Sub-$20 802.11n USB WiFi Adapter That's Linux Friendly

[SystemCrasher]

ath9k FTW

Actually I would recommend Ath9k-based USB devices (ath9k_htc driver) based on something like atheros 9271 or 7010. These tend to work really well in really different modes, be it Ad-Hoc, AP, client, monitor or even some mix of these. Ath9k also supports packets injection, giving owner really full control over what they can send/receive in the air.

Great sensitivity, bug-free operation and so on are hallmarks of these ath9k devices. And now best part: while ath9k_htc devices require firmware, IT IS OPENSOURCE FIRMWARE. Hell yeah! Great job, Qualcomm-Atheros guys

The only downside I can imagine is the fact Qualcomm/Atheros are, um, USA-inclined fascists, obsessed on FCC, ignoring everything else. So they tend to default to USA regulations, no matter what you do and would not even let user to override regdomain properly. Always pretending they know better where you are and which regulations apply, which is annoying to say the least. So, USA-bought ath9k device would be nearly useless in Europe or China (because it would be unable to use 2.4GHz channels 12/13, widely used by APs in these areas). However, if you buy one of these devices from China or similar regulatory domain, it wouldn't be major issue - one less reason to buy "made in USA" devices, lol.

And if someone advertises some wi-fi device as Linux friendly, it could be nice to tell us:
- Which modes driver supports and what actually works.
- What combinations of interfaces are working. Multiple SSIDs, limitations?
- What about "iw phy phyN info" to show actual caps?
- How it performs in long run? Are there some bugs? Ralink drivers are historically known to be bugged and there're numerous bug reports in bug trackers.
- HT20/40? In which modes? Etc. What rates are actually achieved, etc. Would it actually do 300Mbps at reasonable distance, etc? Would it work between 2 such devices, one AP and one client? And so on.

But whatever, Ath9k is best Linux wireless driver around, thanks to cooperation from Qualcomm-Atheros who got it right with kernel devs, unlike many others. From my experience, other drivers aren't anyhow close in terms of features and quality. Hint, hint, dear IC MFRs .

[chrisb]

Actually I would recommend Ath9k-based USB devices (ath9k_htc driver) based on something like atheros 9271 or 7010. These tend to work really well in really different modes, be it Ad-Hoc, AP, client, monitor or even some mix of these. Ath9k also supports packets injection, giving owner really full control over what they can send/receive in the air.

Great sensitivity, bug-free operation and so on are hallmarks of these ath9k devices. And now best part: while ath9k_htc devices require firmware, IT IS OPENSOURCE FIRMWARE. Hell yeah! Great job, Qualcomm-Atheros guys

Is there any recommend ath9k adaptor? This $5 one ok? There's also a tiny AR9271 on Ebay which looks like the Unex DNUA-93F (certified by FSF "Respects Your Freedom").

btw the reviewed Panda PAU06 seems like a U.S. rebranded Ogemray GWF-1C6T. Even the packaging looks the same (sans panda).

[chrisb]

I haven't tried it on a rpi, but I do have that adapter, the firmware seems to get stuck running the device in low power mode which severely limits bandwdith. As far as I'm aware, it can't be fixed because the problem is in firmware. The advertised solution I saw said to disable firmware power management while loading the driver module, but for me it doesn't seem to actually be disabling.

Yeah I just tried it on a desktop with 4.0 kernel and couldn't get it to work at all... not sure what the Pi people are doing that is different, perhaps someone has built an older driver.

[Nille_kungen]

Actually I would recommend Ath9k-based USB devices (ath9k_htc driver) based on something like atheros 9271 or 7010. These tend to work really well in really different modes, be it Ad-Hoc, AP, client, monitor or even some mix of these. Ath9k also supports packets injection, giving owner really full control over what they can send/receive in the air.

Thank you i always look for atheros since the madwifi project but i haven't tried any new chip.
This is what i want.
Dual Band 2.4GHz/5GHz channel 13 support + injection, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, AP mode, Ad-Hoc, monitor and be able to fake MAC address without driver going nuts (i think old atheros needed to delete/recreate device for it to work).
No proprietary firmware and no dropping och speed or dropping connection or malfunction every now and then.
If i skip the ac support (since i don't really need it) then maybe a ath9k would work? But i would really like to have dual band since it can be a lot of traffic in 2.4GHz.

[pal666]

Actually I would recommend Ath9k-based USB devices (ath9k_htc driver) based on something like atheros 9271 or 7010. These tend to work really well in really different modes, be it Ad-Hoc, AP, client, monitor or even some mix of these. Ath9k also supports packets injection, giving owner really full control over what they can send/receive in the air.

it is not possible to buy new abgn dongle on it

[toyotabedzrock]

Actually I would recommend Ath9k-based USB devices (ath9k_htc driver) based on something like atheros 9271 or 7010. These tend to work really well in really different modes, be it Ad-Hoc, AP, client, monitor or even some mix of these. Ath9k also supports packets injection, giving owner really full control over what they can send/receive in the air.

Great sensitivity, bug-free operation and so on are hallmarks of these ath9k devices. And now best part: while ath9k_htc devices require firmware, IT IS OPENSOURCE FIRMWARE. Hell yeah! Great job, Qualcomm-Atheros guys

The only downside I can imagine is the fact Qualcomm/Atheros are, um, USA-inclined fascists, obsessed on FCC, ignoring everything else. So they tend to default to USA regulations, no matter what you do and would not even let user to override regdomain properly. Always pretending they know better where you are and which regulations apply, which is annoying to say the least. So, USA-bought ath9k device would be nearly useless in Europe or China (because it would be unable to use 2.4GHz channels 12/13, widely used by APs in these areas). However, if you buy one of these devices from China or similar regulatory domain, it wouldn't be major issue - one less reason to buy "made in USA" devices, lol.

And if someone advertises some wi-fi device as Linux friendly, it could be nice to tell us:
- Which modes driver supports and what actually works.
- What combinations of interfaces are working. Multiple SSIDs, limitations?
- What about "iw phy phyN info" to show actual caps?
- How it performs in long run? Are there some bugs? Ralink drivers are historically known to be bugged and there're numerous bug reports in bug trackers.
- HT20/40? In which modes? Etc. What rates are actually achieved, etc. Would it actually do 300Mbps at reasonable distance, etc? Would it work between 2 such devices, one AP and one client? And so on.

But whatever, Ath9k is best Linux wireless driver around, thanks to cooperation from Qualcomm-Atheros who got it right with kernel devs, unlike many others. From my experience, other drivers aren't anyhow close in terms of features and quality. Hint, hint, dear IC MFRs .

I don't think anything is made here, just designed here. How many clients can it support in AP mode? I read that something in the newer drivers limited it to 7.

[SystemCrasher]

Is there any recommend ath9k adaptor?

Here we come to what 9271 and 7010 are. AR7010 is basically USB-to-PCI-E bridge. Some microcontroller which got usb at one side and PCI-E lane at another, as well as some memory, etc.

AR9271 is basically something like AR7010+AR9285 radio in single IC package. It is good in terms of sensitivity and everything you expect from Atheros radios, i.e. decent support of virtually any mode one can imagine, up to working packet injection and so on, and more or less bug-free operation. Downside it is 1T1R, which means 150MBps at most in HT40 mode and half of that in HT20.

Best Atheros USB things picky one can find around is something like AR7010 paired with 2T2R Atheros 9xxx radio, giving everything one expects from Atheros drivers, opensource firmware, yet with 300Mbps speed (2T2R), good sensitivity and working with any more or less recent Linux out of the box.

One relatively known example would be something like TP-Link TL-WN821Nv3. Downside is that TP-Link always does same thing as other china/taiwan companies: now you can erroneously buy v4, which is totally different hardware under same name. Needless to say, it makes things a bit tricky.

[SystemCrasher]

I don't think anything is made here, just designed here. How many clients can it support in AP mode? I read that something in the newer drivers limited it to 7.

IIRC, about 8 and it comes down to firmware limits. Firmware allocates certain resources to track each associated client in AP mode and would eventually run out of memory if number of clients is not limited.

Though, ath9k devs told this limit is not set in stone. Theoretically it is possible to overcome this limit. However, it would require serious redesign of some firmware parts, and as you can guess, so far nobody picked up this task.

As for Made In, it is country code in EEPROM what really matters. If you've got 00 or US code in EEPROM, you're screwed! Because channels 12 and 13 will not work without filthy hacks. So if you live in place where channels 12/13 allowed, you're doomed to swear a lot with US adapter. On other hand, some EU or Chinese adapter would do . And if you happen to live in US, you can set regdomain to US and it would remove channels 12/13, according to local regulations. Somehow, Atheros seems to be in mood make Chinese adapters popular at cost of US adapters, lol. Basically, Atheros never adds any features against EEPROM data, only cripples it further. So if you've got US device with crippled EEPROM...

[chrisb]

One relatively known example would be something like TP-Link TL-WN821Nv3. Downside is that TP-Link always does same thing as other china/taiwan companies: now you can erroneously buy v4, which is totally different hardware under same name. Needless to say, it makes things a bit tricky.

Thanks, I found a v3 on Ebay and will give it a go. (For reference, TP-Link label the hardware version at the end of the FCC-ID)

[caligula]

If you want Wireless N USB Adapter you can support fsf by getting this one:
https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-lin...ux-tpe-n150usb

You probably didn't realize the product was mentioned here only to advertise the referral link.