100% Supported WiFi mini pcie cards

[chuckbird]

Hello,

can you please write here what mini pci WiFi card do you use that is 100% compatible with FreeBSD 14 in both 2.4Ghz and 5ghz Mode?

My laptop comes with an Intel AX200 WiFi 6 card that is seemingly only half supported as it cannot discover wlans other than 2.4Ghz ones.

Thanks who might help.

 

[nxjoseph]

Hi. I was installed FreeBSD 13.2 to my sisters' old notebook and it's wifi card was a BCM4313 which is an unsupported card and I replaced it with an Atheros AR9462 wifi card. This card supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. It was running in 802.11na mode, the speeds i got are below, they are my actual internet speeds. It does have bluetooth too but i didn't try it's bluetooth. I would recommend you to buy this card.

This is the hw-probe of the notebook.

HW probe of Dell Inspiron N5010 #b32ded6bb9

A database of all the hardware that works under bsd

bsd-hardware.info

wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    ether XXX
    inet XXX netmask XXX broadcast XXX
    groups: ...
    ssid ... channel 52 (5260 MHz 11a ht/40+) bssid XXX
    regdomain 106 indoor ecm authmode WPA2/802.11i privacy ON
    deftxkey UNDEF AES-CCM 2:128-bit txpower 30 bmiss 7 mcastrate 6
    mgmtrate 6 scanvalid 60 ampdulimit 64k ampdudensity 4 shortgi -uapsd
    wme burst roaming MANUAL
    parent interface: ath0
    media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet MCS mode 11na
    status: associated
    nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>

You can see the atheros hardware supports here.

dev/ath_hal(4)/HardwareSupport - FreeBSD Wiki

 

[canihazsekooriti]

I'm running an ath AR9287 card in Access Point mode, and it's alright speed. Mine and nxjoseph's cards have only 2 antennas, though. You want a 3 antenna card to max your speed. You can get some cheap ones online.

 

[HenryHu]

My motherboard came with an AX211 Wifi 6E card, and it's supported by the iwlwifi driver:

Intel(R) Wireless WiFi based driver for FreeBSD
iwlwifi0: <iwlwifi> mem 0x4016224000-0x4016227fff at device 20.3 on pci0
iwlwifi0: Detected crf-id 0x400410, cnv-id 0x80401 wfpm id 0x80000020
iwlwifi0: PCI dev 7a70/0094, rev=0x430, rfid=0x2010d000
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-so-a0-gf-a0-83.ucode'
iwlwifi0: api flags index 2 larger than supported by driver
iwlwifi0: TLV_FW_FSEQ_VERSION: FSEQ Version: 0.0.2.41
iwlwifi0: loaded firmware version 83.e8f84e98.0 so-a0-gf-a0-83.ucode op_mode iwlmvm
iwlwifi0: Detected Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX211 160MHz, REV=0x430
iwlwifi0: WRT: Invalid buffer destination
iwlwifi0: WFPM_UMAC_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x20
iwlwifi0: WFPM_LMAC2_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x1f
iwlwifi0: WFPM_AUTH_KEY_0: 0x90
iwlwifi0: CNVI_SCU_SEQ_DATA_DW9: 0x0
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-so-a0-gf-a0.pnvm'
iwlwifi0: loaded PNVM version 181407b3
iwlwifi0: RFIm is deactivated, reason = 5
iwlwifi0: Detected RF GF, rfid=0x2010d000
iwlwifi0: base HW address: ...
iwlwifi0: WRT: Invalid buffer destination
iwlwifi0: WFPM_UMAC_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x20
iwlwifi0: WFPM_LMAC2_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x1f
iwlwifi0: WFPM_AUTH_KEY_0: 0x90
iwlwifi0: CNVI_SCU_SEQ_DATA_DW9: 0x0
iwlwifi0: RFIm is deactivated, reason = 5

It seems like that it can find 2.4G networks just fine?

> ifconfig wlan0 scan | grep henryhu
henryhu-2G ... 1 54M -41:-96 100 EP RSN BSSLOAD HTCAP WPS WPA WME
henryhu ... 149 54M -43:-96 100 EP RSN BSSLOAD HTCAP VHTCAP VHTOPMODE VHTPWRENV WPS WME

 

[friquant]

I'm running an ath AR9287 card in Access Point mode, and it's alright speed. Mine and nxjoseph's cards have only 2 antennas, though. You want a 3 antenna card to max your speed. You can get some cheap ones online.

I bought an AR9287 but it's only picking up up 2.4Ghz bands.

 

[canihazsekooriti]

I bought an AR9287 but it's only picking up up 2.4Ghz bands.

It's a weird card. Officially, it's a 2.4GHz only card, but it's 802.11n and actually has 5GHz channels to increase the bandwidth. So it cannot detect or connect to 5GHz networks, but it can actually USE 5GHz channels in AP mode as a router. When I do use a 5GHz channel in AP mode on this card, however, I get to use it but the network only supports the B/G mode, so the only benefit I get using a 5GHz channel is avoiding the 2.4GHz band congestion. I don't even think you can use 802.11n mode on this card without some proprietary software both router-side and client-side.

 

[Phishfry]

You want a 3 antenna card to max your speed

I don't see much benefit of adding a second antenna. More about diversity.
Does MIMO work on FreBSD? My tests don't show it. I still buy the best Atheros module in case we get support.

For PCIe half-card I would recommend Atheros AR9380/AR5BHB112, AR9435/AR5B125 and latest generation ath9k supported:
Atheros AR9462/AR5B22

For M.2 card:
Atheros QCNFA222 AR5BWB222

For PCIe full sized cards I like these:
Ubiquiti SR71-E

For base station:
Mikrotik R11e-5HnD