Re: PCI-E mini wireless card to use Debian as AP
[Replying to list as I guess this might be of use to others]
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 06:44, Cameron Hutchison <camh@xdna.net> wrote:
>>Does anyone have any experience of doing this and/or can suggest any
>>cards which would be suitable? Draft N support would be nice, but not
>>essential. I am in the UK which may or may not make it harder - most
>>places don't seem to sell mini PCI-E cards, but maybe that's the same
>>worldwide.
>
> I recently purchased an atheros mini pcie half-card off ebay. Most of
> the sellers of these will ship world-wide. Prices are around $US15-20.
> Search ebay for "atheros mini pci half".
>
For some reason I didn't even think to check eBay. Good idea :-)
> If you leave "half" out of the search, it turns up a number of AR5008
> models. I read recently that these are not so well supported, so you may
> want to skip them.
>
> Anyway, I stuck one of these into my laptop today and turned it into an
> access point successfully.
>
> These use the ath9k driver, which is one of the most mature drivers in
> the Linux tree, with full open source - no binary blobs needed as far as
> I know. Certainly no host-side blobs.
>
> One downside to the card I got it that is has a single radio for
> 802.11n - no 5Ghz band. For an AP, you probably want to make sure you
> get a dual-band radio that works on 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz.
>
It looks like there are a range of Atheros devices, all cheaper than
buying them from anywhere else I've looked. Unless anyone pipes up
with a horror story, I'll try an AR9287 since it's cheap enough that I
won't get too upset if it all goes pear shaped. I can't find any
reports of problems with that device, though it has only recently
become supported (should work with the kernel currently in
testing/unstable/backports AFAICT). Of course, I couldn't find any
*recent* reports of problems with the AR5008 you mention either, so
perhaps I'm not looking hard enough.
> Hope this helps somewhat.
>
>
I think so - especially the mention of that specific driver as a good
choice helps narrow down the field. Thanks for your input.
Next I need to figure out what antennas I need to get. I'll try to
report back if it ends in success - or disaster.
Nye
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