I'm looking to (finally) upgrade the wireless network in my home to 802.11ac.
What are the recommended wireless adapters with good Linux driver support these days?
- PCI(x) is preferable, but USB (3) works too - MIMO (>= 2x2) - Support for (V)HT20-160 (20/40MHz etc. for 2.4 GHz and so forth) - Just general high throughput
I've been looking around and seems it's mostly just muh geymen Asus adapters than can do high speeds, but they all look to use shitty Broadcom firmware/drivers.
Currently using TP-Link TL-WDN4800 which is working just fine, but specs is lagging behind and no ac. TP-Link Archer T9E looks pretty good, but support seems iffy..
Whatever you do stay away from anything using realtek drivers. Most the time its a total crapshoot whether it will work or not.
I had a asus n-13 usb use realtek rtl8122cu that worked fine with older distros pre Ubuntu 16.04 but now doesnt work on anything. >tfw have to choose a distro based on a wifi adapter
Wyatt Clark
I haven't had anything with realtek myself before, but it sure seems to be problematic. Thanks for the heads up.
Michael Hughes
Anyone else?
Mason Watson
OP you could "build" one yourself. I cant recommend a particular wifi chip, but just putting this out there as an option. Something like this: r.ebay.com/s1XEFe
Ive done it once before, I just bought an intel wifi card for a laptop and combined it with the adapter I linked to. Worked like a charm.
I did it because at the time there wasnt any wifi pcie card I thought was good enough. So I built one myself.
Justin James
I googled a bit, and the Intel AC 7260 should be compatible with linux AND it supports 802.11ac.
So buy one of those, and get the adapter here and you are golden.
Ayden Butler
>using wifi on a desktop
Kevin Reed
Ok the intel AC 8265 is better as it supports MIMO and whatever else you require. Get that and the pcie adapter.
Jace Wilson
>tfw [ 1605.400522] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able >[ 1605.568453] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able >[ 1606.624439] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able >[ 1606.680421] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able >[ 1606.696420] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able >[ 1606.876425] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able >[ 1607.292391] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able >[ 1607.332392] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able >[ 1608.108333] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able >[ 1608.800211] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able >[ 1611.176053] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able >[ 1615.271815] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able >[ 1618.867654] brcmsmac bcma0:1: START: tid 1 is not agg'able
Nathaniel Gutierrez
That is actually very cool! I found quite a bit of MiniPCI Express 1.1/2.0 intended for embedded systems, laptops or whatever by looking at ath10k/qualcomm atheros detailing:
For instance compex.com.sg/product/wle600v5-27/ and the like seemed to have better specifications than many dedicated "complete" PCIe/USB 3.0 solutions.
I'll definitely check out Intel AC 7260/8265. Price looks pretty good too!
>echo -e "blacklist b43\nblacklist ssb" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf Oh shit I fixed it, I've been filling gigs of logs with that fucking error ever since I installed Linux on this shitty laptop, I guess I was trying to use more than 1 driver or something.
David Gutierrez
Seems like there's a couple of upcoming wireless cards from Intel that features better (theoretical) max speed:
Namely the AC 9260, 9560. Their status is "launched", but I'm not able to find them anywhere online yet. We'll probably seem them enter market later Q4'17 or early next year.
Guess I'll purchase a AC 8265 for now and upgrade later if I find the need.
Jose Bennett
Stupid question; are the connections between the card and adapter plug and play? Kind of looks like it by looking at other solutions using Intel cards (see picture), but is there any tooling or whatever needed?
Andrew Roberts
its plug and play. the mini pcie cards are, well pcie cards. The wifi adapters in your pic is just a pcie riser card. It just converts the mini pcie to ordinary pcie.
Wyatt Campbell
>Hows the antennas at the adapter you linked to? They are just bog standard antennas. If you need you can get different kinds on ebay as well. All the connectors are the same so the antennas are just plug and play. But usually the standard plain ones covers 99% of any use case anyway.
Dominic Brown
>wireless
Why not use a powerline adatper? Better in every way unless you need to carry around something like a phone or laptop that needs to be cordless.
Unless you live in an ancient house with garbage wiring you'll get way better speeds with powerline.
Grayson Hughes
Sorry that was really unclear of me. I was thinking about the connections to the antennas, not the mini pcie slot. I.e. like the ones in the picture connected with small black cables.
Jeremiah Baker
Cool, thanks again!
Parker Foster
They are standard connectors, should fit just about any wifi card.
Brayden Evans
Great stuff.
Camden Turner
A slightly unrelated question, but i've been looking for resources about 802.11ac/802.1x for quite a while, but haven't been able to find anything. I'm looking to learn as much as possible, is there anyone who could point me in the right direction?
Ryder James
Wikipedia is a pretty good starting point. Check the references and external links for more stuff.
The external links in particular should be interesting, including papers/articles from Cisco, Rohde & Schwarz, ++ with introduction to the specification.
