Wanted: USB wireless with 11n functionality

P

phalange

So after the train wreck of 76841, and since I decided against throwing my T470s off the roof, I'm on the market for a solution.

Can anyone recommend a USB wireless adapter that has 11n (meaning 300Mbps) functionality in FreeBSD? Yes, I spent an hour cross-referencing chipsets from the FreeBSD hardware notes, but if someone has a proven solution, I'd rather hear that.

Ideally:
small form factor, and NO antenna -- I want to leave it in always but still be portable.
11n speed -- must have
 
I think you can forget about that, i was in the same situation as you: Looking for a working 802.11n stick but i realized that 99,x% all of them using rtwn/urtwn (Realtek) chips, the chipset 8812au seems to be often in use for powerful 802.11n sticks, but this driver only works currently with 802.11a/g here.
 
TP-Link WN-722N v1(!) uses at least some Atheros chipset (AR9002U according to some sites). I don't know if or how well FreeBSD supports that chipset though. It also has an external antenna but the quality is pretty nice and it supports monitor/ap modes.
 
What do you need the 11n speed for? Is it really a must have or just a nice to have?
Generally if you need fast, then an ethernet cable is the correct choice.

Some other solutions could be a USB passthrough (i.e VirtualBox) to Windows 10 and then share the connection through that. Think of this as a "proprietary compatibility layer". If Linux has a driver, then you might be able to switch the Windows 10 out for a Linux distro.

Perhaps there is something like this for 11n?: https://www.amazon.co.uk/PQI-Air-Express-Wireless-Router/dp/B00BNAST1I

Offtopic:
Do many routers around you support 11n speed? Certainly in England where we know our internet is shite and the main bottleneck, all our coffee shops generally restrict connection to around 56kbps each so there is enough internet to share XD
 
kpedersen said:
Do many routers around you support 11n speed? Certainly in England where we know our internet is shite and the main bottleneck, all our coffee shops generally restrict connection to around 56kbps each so there is enough internet to share XD
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To be honest, i really don't know. It's extremely rare i will even get out my laptop in public places and then i have an UMTS modem builtin so i usually just use this and ignore any kind of wifi there might be. My personal networks usually do at least N though. The above mentioned WN-722N is pretty well supported in Linux (ath9k) and makes for a quite good software router (even just using the default antenna) if a PCI card is not an option (like with the stoneage laptop i was using a couple years back).
 
ekvz said:
TP-Link WN-722N v1(!) uses at least some Atheros chipset (AR9002U according to some sites). I don't know if or how well FreeBSD supports that chipset though. It also has an external antenna but the quality is pretty nice and it supports monitor/ap modes.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it seems the smaller USB wireless modems tend to have chip sets poorly supported in freebsd -- meaning they can achieve no more than 11a speeds. I found some big ugly ones with those jumbo antennae, but on a laptop (especially an ultra-portable) those aren't my favorite.

kpedersen said:
What do you need the 11n speed for? Is it really a must have or just a nice to have?
Generally if you need fast, then an ethernet cable is the correct choice.
Click to expand...

Must have. I have a great mesh wifi in my home along with service provider giving me 300Mbps. I easily get near that in almost any room (250Mbps or better). Streaming, file transfer, etc are just a breeze. So 20Mbps is a "no way." I agree that coffee shops are hit or miss, but I do find workplaces around me, back when we went to such places, had fast connections too.
 
kpedersen said:
Some other solutions could be a USB passthrough (i.e VirtualBox) to Windows 10
Click to expand...

This is interesting, there's a thread here where someone used Linux to do it. The config is hard for me though. Is the idea that a VM can auto-mount at bootup, then access the bare metal modem -- in other words basically circumvent vbox abstraction -- and then output that connection back to the host as a full speed connection?

The complexity concerns me, as does having vbox chew up system resources (this is a t470s after all) but the concept is pretty cool if it works.
 
phalange said:
This is interesting, there's a thread here where someone used Linux to do it.
Click to expand...

Actually, this is a better solution (though more complex). VirtualBox doesn't have the proprietary extension pack so you only get usb 1.1 (maybe 2.0) support. This would be a bottleneck for your wifi chip.

Bhyve allows you to pass hardware through but works in terms of the whole PCI device (i.e USB bus) rather than individual USB devices. If this works for you, then that would be ideal.

It seems that tingo was successful in his experiment and has more expertise than me. He is still around on these forums so perhaps if you do go this route, revive that thread and he might be able to help out.

I wouldn't worry too much about the performance impact. Just use a very bare-bones Linux like Alpine and it will probably use less RAM and processor resources than just the Windows DRM or anti-piracy service alone XD
 
Phishfry said:
The MediaTek RT5370 and RT5372 usb devices support 802.11n using the run(4) driver.
It is also one of the only usb wireless drivers to support hostapd.
Click to expand...

We might have winner here. They sell this in a very small form factor for $9. For 9 bones, I'm in. Thanks for this suggestion

T-Daemon said:
If system resources are a concern, there is a step by step guide of running OpenWRT in bhyve on the freebsd-hackers@ list from June. The author claims having with that method 866Mbps on a notebook with intel 8265. The required resources are not much.

Click to expand...

Yeah, this is cool. He's using an 8265 and mine is 8260, but it might still work.
 
I won't guarantee that you will get 802.11n.
If you look at the bottom of the man page notice the caveats.
"The run driver does not support any of the 802.11n capabilities offered
by the RT2800, RT3000 and RT3900 chipsets."

I seem to remember the RT53XX and RT55XX offering 802.11n.
It has been a while since I have used them though.
 
Phishfry said:
I won't guarantee that you will get 802.11n.
If you look at the bottom of the man page notice the caveats.
"The run driver does not support any of the 802.11n capabilities offered
by the RT2800, RT3000 and RT3900 chipsets."

I seem to remember the RT53XX and RT55XX offering 802.11n.
It has been a while since I have used them though.
Click to expand...

I don't know, that caveat looks pretty blunt to me. The 5730 is one of several radio chips in the 3900 chipset, and the language is clear about 3900 having no 11n using run(4). I think I'm back where I started.
 
phalange said:
I don't know, that caveat looks pretty blunt to me. The 5730 is one of several radio chips in the 3900 chipset, and the language is clear about 3900 having no 11n using run(4). I think I'm back where I started.
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Yes, i also fear that might be the case. The ral driver has the same disclaimer and it's certainly true for the WMP600N PCI card (RT2860) i was trying some time ago.

Maybe looking at https://deviwiki.com/ and matching chipsets to what FreeBSDs drivers support could find you something.

Edit: https://deviwiki.com/wiki/Special:A...efault]=&p[class]=sortable+wikitable+smwtable could be interesting as according to ath():

The ath driver provides support for wireless network adapters based on the Atheros AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, AR5416 and AR9300 programming APIs.
Click to expand...
AR5416 and later class devices are capable of 802.11n operation
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if AR9300 means AR93xx though but i couldn't find any exact matches for AR9300 so i guess it might mean the whole range.
 
As mjollnir says, in my humble knowledge and understanding ;) I use both in Linux, FreBSD, nomadBSD and everything I want in VirtualBox, a WUSB54gc, which I bought and didn't use for almost 10 years, and I started using it when the network card of my old PC burned out.
Hasta el día de hoy, funciona de maravilla. Funciona con el controlador de ejecución.

Edito: well it's not for 300 Mbps.
 
WTF, me on this thread without even posting here? The alternative would be to exchange the internal M.2 WiFi card with another one with the appropiate chipset, instead of an external USB stick. You'll also have a better antenna (in the display). These ThinkPads are easy to maintain/repair as long as you don't have two left hands.
 
mjollnir said:
WTF, me on this thread without even posting here? The alternative would be to exchange the internal M.2 WiFi card with another one with the appropiate chipset, instead of an external USB stick. You'll also have a better antenna (in the display). These ThinkPads are easy to maintain/repair as long as you don't have two left hands.
Click to expand...

I like this idea a lot. I've had the laptop open to add RAM, and it's an m.2 2230 size wireless card. Is there an easy way to cross-reference what chipsets (or really what drivers) actually achieve 11n speeds in FreeBSD?

For example I quickly turned up an Intel 7265 card, but it uses that iwm(4) driver which seems to be still cursed to 11a speeds.

EDIT
It's partly a limitation of the hardware database. The term "supported" doesn't mean "all protocols supported."

The 8265 seems to be a drop-in replacement for the 8260, but is also stuck with the iwm(4) driver.
 
mjollnir said:
WTF, me on this thread without even posting here? The alternative would be to exchange the internal M.2 WiFi card with another one with the appropiate chipset, instead of an external USB stick. You'll also have a better antenna (in the display). These ThinkPads are easy to maintain/repair as long as you don't have two left hands.
Click to expand...

That's what i thought about too but then he wrote about an Ultrabook and i am not sure what exactly that is (maybe one of those ultra thin laptops that already break when someone looks funny at them?). Also while Thinkpads are quite easy to take apart (just get a service manual if you are really scared about damaging the device) they usually have a BIOS whitelist of allowed components so that has to be taken into account (by either getting an allowed part or installing a BIOS mod to remove the restriction: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Custom_BIOS). Or maybe this is the perfect opportunity to install Coreboot/Libreboot (if it's available for the T470 OP wrote about)? ;)
 
ekvz said:
That's what i thought about too but then he wrote about an Ultrabook and i am not sure what exactly that is (maybe one of those ultra thin laptops that already break when someone looks funny at them?). Also while Thinkpads are quite easy to take apart (just get a service manual if you are really scared about damaging the device) they usually have a BIOS whitelist of allowed components so that has to be taken into account (by either getting an allowed part or installing a BIOS mod to remove the restriction: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Custom_BIOS). Or maybe this is the perfect opportunity to install Coreboot (if it's available for the T470 OP wrote about)? ;)
Click to expand...

It's a T470s. I used ultrabook, but maybe thin and light is more accurate. I'd nuke the bios if I had to, but I don't think there's a card that fits in any event.

kpedersen said:
You just need to embrace it ;)

Buy a set of these: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/TaYAAOxyDgRQ9jHn/s-l400.jpg
And wrap the antenna with the fabric. Bonus points if you have a USB dongle plugged in each side of your laptop!

Heck, I would even wear the tail if it made my network speeds faster XD
Click to expand...

Well, we agree that network speed is the wellspring of all happiness. But those ears.
 
 
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