# Choice of Wi-Fi card



## muxas (Feb 5, 2014)

Hello,

What Wi-Fi card should I choose to work as an access point? FreeBSD 9.2. On the server will be a NAS, proxy, and DLNA.


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## wblock@ (Feb 5, 2014)

The short answer is Atheros (ath(4)), but it is not that easy.  Some PCI or PCIe models are not supported.  uath(4) did not support many newer USB types.  It would help to know what kind of slot you plan to use.

The card must support hostap to be used as an access point.


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## muxas (Feb 6, 2014)

Planned PCI slot*.*


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## Locado (Feb 8, 2014)

Analogous question for PCIe*.*


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## ralphbsz (Feb 8, 2014)

The correct question so ask is not what _card_ to get, but what _chip_.  One of the difficulties with this is that wireless cards are sold to be pretty generic.  It is often not easy to figure out what chip is on what card.  if you live in an area with retail computer stores, maybe you can physically check the card.  I've had hassles with having to return cards that were sold as chip X (Atheros), but the product that arrived had chip Y (Ralink) on it.  The vendor claimed that it made no difference, since both are wireless cards, and both work under windows with the driver CD that's included in the package.  The vendor may be right, but that is irrelevant.  (To their credit: they refunded my money, and didn't even require me to mail the cards back, so I ended up giving them away to friends who needed cards for their laptops).

I'll join the chorus of people who recommend Atheros chips.  I currently use an Atheros 9285, on a no-name-brand miniPCIe card.  It works 95% well as an access point, in 802.11g mode.  It runs at many Mbit/s (just tested at 4.5 Mbit/s moments ago), and I really don't care whether it should run faster, because I have no workload that requires faster access.

Why do I say that it only works 95%?  Because there is a known bug in the ath driver in FreeBSD, which manifests itself as log lines saying
	
	



```
ath0: stuck beacon; resetting (bmiss count 4)
```
The cause seems complicated, and I only marginally understand it: has something to do with having two diversity antennas, a high noise level on one antenna but not the other, which then causes the driver to wrongly disable both antennas, and then trip over its own feet because it can't send beacon packets out, even though it should be able to, since there is a noise-free antenna (I probably mangled that explanation).  The effect is that all wireless freezes for a few seconds up to a few minutes.  Most of the time, it fixes itself, before any of my "users" (wife and son) complain.  If they complain too loudly, I mutter something about "computer problems", and go reboot the server / access point.

I would definitely buy the same card again (even with that little glitch).  And I continue to believe that for simplicity of system configuration and administration, and for power efficiency, having a small home server also act as the wireless AP is a good setup.


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## muxas (Feb 10, 2014)

> The correct question so ask is not what *card* to get, but what *chip*



You're absolutely right, now the card installed is a D-Link DWA 510 chip Ralink rt2561. The server is connected as a client to the access point. Map works poorly. It loses touch and has low speed. Maybe there is a possibility to make this card work normally at least as a client? A better mode ad-hoc*.*


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## muxas (Feb 14, 2014)

Hello
Tell me whether to take such cards here for running ad-hoc:
Asus PCI-N10 chip RT3060.
TP-LINK WN851ND chip Atheros AR9227.
TP-LINK TL-WN751ND chip Atheros AR9227.

If yes, what? More inclined to WN851ND as she Atheros chip and at higher speeds.


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## wblock@ (Feb 14, 2014)

The Atheros 9227 is listed but not shown as supported here: https://wiki.freebsd.org/dev/ath_hal(4)/HardwareSupport.

ral(4) does not show the Ralink RT3060, it may be supported but not listed or supported by another driver, or not supported at all.

I would keep looking.  There are full-size PCIe adapter cards that hold laptop-sized mini-PCIe cards.  I have one of these, and it lets me put my choice of cards in a desktop.


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