# Any supported 802.11ac Mini PCIe WiFi Module to use with a PC Engines board?



## lifepillar (Dec 26, 2020)

I have recently bought a PC Engines apu2e4 board, which I plan to use as a FreeBSD-based firewall/router. Now I am researching the best way to extend it with (ideally, Gigabit) wireless support. I'd like to add a Mini PCIe card (to keep everything in a single device), but AFAIK the ones recommended by the PC Engines guys are either not yet supported (wle600vx, wle900vx) or they are 802.11n only (wle200nx). Do any alternatives to the former exist, which work with FreeBSD 12, perhaps suboptimally, but which might be used at full throttle once better drivers become available? Would you rather get a slower, but compatible card now, and replace it with a faster one when FreeBSD gets better support? Or should I just give up and get an external WAP instead (in which case, I would appreciate it if you can share your experience with an apu2+AP setup)?


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## Martin Paredes (Dec 26, 2020)

Check this post I made about Intel wireless cards, I am planning to buy a Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260

As far as I know, FreeBSD does not have support for 801.11ac, I hope it will arrive soon, because 802.11ax already exists


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## scottro (Dec 26, 2020)

I have a 7260 card in two laptops.  It doesn't do 801.11ac for FreeBSD, though it works without problem in Linux.  It works in FreeBSD, but only gives LAN speeds of around 2-7 MB/s


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## neel (Dec 27, 2020)

If you are fine with USB, I use the TP-Link Nano AC600 USB Wifi Adapter (Archer T2U Nano).

It's not the fastest, but is more reliable than the integrated Intel AC9560 on my HP Spectre. I get about 40 Mbps as opposed to 20 Mbps with the AC9560.

The AC9560 is unreliable on FreeBSD's `iwm`, even on ThinkPads from what I read. I get a ThinkPad with an AC9560 from work, but it disables USB booting so I can't test if it's an HP issue or Lenovo is affected as well. I don't use that ThinkPad, as I have another one from work for "normal" stuff which has an AC8265 which works fine, but my job is very Windows-centric so using BSD at work is impractical at best.


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## lifepillar (Dec 27, 2020)

Thank you all. I am bit confused by some of your statements, though. Could you please clarify the following:


> FreeBSD does not have support for 801.11ac


Do you mean, already in the kernel? From your post, it appears that the iwm driver provides such support for some cards.


> I have a 7260 card in two laptops.  It doesn't do 801.11ac for FreeBSD


The 7260 is a 802.11ac card. Shouldn't that work with the iwm driver?


> It works in FreeBSD, but only gives LAN speeds of around 2-7 MB/s





> I get about 40 Mbps as opposed to 20 Mbps with the AC9560.


~40 Mbps is my current network's speed. I'd like to bump that up. From your comments, it seems that even if I used, say, a 7260 card with the iwm driver, I couldn't get more than that. That's a bit surprising, as that card nominally supports 867 Mbps in the 5 Ghz band. I guess it's because the driver needs more work? You say that in Linux “it works without problem”.

Anyway, from your posts I conclude that, in the short term, it is probably better for me to buy an external access point. Looking forward for improvements in the wireless department, though!


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## Martin Paredes (Dec 27, 2020)

In the manual of iwm(4) says


> Currently, iwm only supports 802.11b and 802.11g modes.  It will not as-
> sociate to access points that are configured to operate only in 802.11n
> or 802.11ac modes.



I hope soon this change and someone make 802.11ac work

By the moment we are buying the hardware that support 802.11ac


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## neel (Dec 27, 2020)

lifepillar said:


> Thank you all. I am bit confused by some of your statements, though. Could you please clarify the following:
> 
> Do you mean, already in the kernel? From your post, it appears that the iwm driver provides such support for some cards.
> 
> ...


The TP-Link Nano AC600 USB Wifi Adapter (Archer T2U Nano) supports "802.11ac" on FreeBSD, but operates more at 802.11n-like speeds since it lacks the 802.11ac "features".


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## Martin Paredes (Dec 27, 2020)

You can search what Atheros NIC are miniPCI, Adrian Chadd post in July 15 2020 in his blog

I'm back into the grind of FreeBSD's wireless stack and 802.11ac


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## lifepillar (Dec 27, 2020)

> In the manual of iwm(4) says


Thanks for pointing that out! That sentence is missing in iwm's man page of my system (FreeBSD 12.1). Which reminds me that I should upgrade…


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## aponomarenko (Jan 18, 2021)

You can try any Wi-Fi AC to Ethernet adapter while AC is not implemented.


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