# anyone have any success with any Gigabit wireless pci cards?



## Chris_H (Jun 25, 2018)

Firstly; apologies if this belongs in network/wireless.
But given this is about the _card_ (hardware); this felt like the right place. 
OK. now to the question;
Has anyone tried with any success to get Gigabit wireless working?
If so, what card did you use. I'm looking at PCIe cards, and they look promising. But I don't
want to buy one, if they don't work. 

Thanks!

--Chris


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## shepper (Jun 25, 2018)

Usually "Gigabit" is used to describe NIC interfaces (10/100/1000).  Wireless cards are grouped by 802.11b/802.11g/802.11n/802.11ac standards.
FreeBSD Handbook section 31.3
802.11n/802.11ac support 5Ghz and are "fastest".  You can sort through what is available by reviewing the FreeBSD 11 hardware notes
FreeBSD 11.1 wlan drivers

You need to read the man page for each 802.11n/802.11ac card as some do not support 11n/11ac.  Example: rtwn(4).

Intel laptop cards seem to have the best support and it is possible to buy an adapter to use them in a PCIe slot for around $20USD + the intel card itself.

I'm using a Chinese knockoff rtwn(4) that can be had for < $10USD.  (Search Ebay for 8188CE + PCI-E).  Has been running at 11g speeds for 6 months.


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## VladiBG (Jun 25, 2018)

You can try with iwm (4) which support the following chips:
       Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 3160
       Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 3165
       Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 7260
       Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 7265
       Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 8260
for example there's a PCIe card with Intel 7265 that support up to 867 Mbps but it's far behind the Gigabit
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/oas/product-detail.html?oid=8872137


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## Chris_H (Jun 25, 2018)

Thanks, shepper , and VladiBG for the replies!
I should have probably added WiGig to the "tags", and my post.
VladiBG Indeed. Intel _does_ seem to have the largest selection available. They're also in the WiGig standards committee. I'm just looking to cut all there #$!* cables! Ideally; I'm looking to build a FreeBSD box as a wireless GW
with a 10 gigabit nic, and X number of PCIe wireless nics. Which brought me to my question. I was hoping to get
some feedback from anyone already using a (PCIe) wireless nic on FreeBSD. So I could choose _wisely_. 

Thanks again, shepper , and VladiBG , for the great replies!

--Chris


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## phoenix (Jun 25, 2018)

Note: WiGig is completely separate/different from 802.11 wireless, using the 24 GHz (or 60 GHz?) band.

There's no support for WiGig in FreeBSD at this time. Not even sure there's support for it in Linux yet. Windows barely supports it. And I believe there's only a single router/AP that supports it (at least on the consumer side).


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## Chris_H (Jun 25, 2018)

Thanks for the reply, phoenix !


phoenix said:


> Note: WiGig is completely separate/different from 802.11 wireless, using the 24 GHz (or 60 GHz?) band.
> 
> There's no support for WiGig in FreeBSD at this time. Not even sure there's support for it in Linux yet. Windows barely supports it. And I believe there's only a single router/AP that supports it (at least on the consumer side).


Right! Well, sort of. Yes, *BSD has no support for WiGig as yet. I picked up a 10 gigabit (WiGig) PCIe card that I hope to find time to start hacking into a usable card with FreeBSD. I offered Adrian one, as well. As to router/AP. When I began investigating support, and landed the card I picked up; I found there were several out there. But as memory serves; largely by only 2 manufacturers. No matter, I guess. As they're largely based on Atheros, which makes it all the easier to port to FreeBSD. 
I wish I could _cite_ all of this better. But I currently have ~175 tabs open in my Browser, due to other investigations, and pr(1)'s I'm currently working on. So I'm afraid to open any more. 

Thanks again, phoenix !

--Chris

P.S. I'll try to come back with links!


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## tingo (Jun 26, 2018)

Also note that wireless performance for 5 GHz (as in "throughput") currently might not be as good as on other operating systems. The reason for this is that (some) wireless drivers in FreeBSD doesn't have support for everything needed - yet. This based on personal experience and measurements.


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## diizzy (Jul 3, 2018)

You could also get a router/AP and run OpenWRT on it making it a transparent brigde to ethernet if you want. Most wallplug repeaters also supports this, like TP-Link's models etc.


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