802.11n usb wifi dongles to work with hostapd on IIAB and increasing bandwidth from 54 Mbps to 300 Mbps #3119
Replies: 6 comments
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Reason 1. To add WIFI to older PCs like M72e Lenovo with Linux Mint builds & and older Raspberry PI Models like PI 2B and PI 2B+ on which we can run the medical IIAB content, similar to PI Zero W. There are millions of older PI models out there and the idea is re-cycle them like older laptops and even desktops from the 1990's running Windows Vista. Reason 2. Get higher speeds for hotspot. At the moment the theoretical limit is 54 Mbps with 802.11g with 2.4Ghz. With modern dongles you should get dual band working with 2.4 Ghz & 5 Ghz , so higher speeds like 150, 300 & 600 Mbps.should be possible. There are many routers which give this capability. |
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Jerry has provide some notes on how to find out if a dongle can support the AP Mode using the iw list command. For Chipsets and drivers see here https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/documentation/modes |
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Note that Intel does not provide support for AP mode at 5Ghz as documented here https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/iwlwifi. Raspberry PI Broadcom dongle as sold with PI 2B+ works fine, but cannot get it.
The key is to match the dongle chip set with its correct driver. I am testing this one at the moment and can get to to work with 802.11n and get 72 Mbps sec speed. |
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Here is some output of my settings with the dual-band dongle I am testing: pc01@iiab01:~$ lsusb dmesg | grep usb [ 2.196876] usb 2-1.3.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [ 5.829231] usbcore: registered new interface driver rtl8821cu pc01@iiab01:/etc/hostapd$ dmesg | grep rtl Once my system recognised the dongle and the driver was correct, I set wifi_up_down to False and ran iiab-network to get hostapd to pick up the new dongle. The checked that hostapd started and checked its speed which was 54Mbps. this is the file now ## Basic configuration ssid=iiab-mint203 ## Hardware configuration pc01@iiab01:~$ iwconfig br0 no wireless extensions. tun0 no wireless extensions. wlx8c882b0009a4 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"iiab-mint203" Nickname:"WIFI@REALTEK" |
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I need to figure out how to rename the system interface name like wlx8c882b0009a4 ( which contains the MAC address digits by default ) to something like wlx0 or wlan0 or wifi0. Then try if I can get 150 Mbps and finally get 5 Ghz. Any suggestions would be welcome. |
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Also want some suggestions on how to use two separate dongles, one for Upstream WI-FI and the other for AP i.e downstream WIFI so we keep "internal" & "external" traffic separate for security reasons. You only switch ON upstream traffic when needed. There is something like iiab-internet-off which I don't know how it works. We can already switch off downstream " internal" traffic with iiab-hotspot-off. We need to start addressing WI-FI security in particular and security in general seriously and "harden" IIAB as much as it is feasible to do. |
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I am testing a number of USB2 WIFI dongles to work with hostapd on IIAB. Why do it?. Two main reasons
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