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Comment by e12e | Hacker News Reader

I've been trying to figure out if there are any hw out there that allows good wifi6/hostap support under Linux, to run an access point - the nearest I've come is this[1] list. But I'm still unsure if it is feasible to build an access point on top of an Intel/AMD minipc with contemporary hw?

I'd be happy to run on arm or riscv if I can get high throughput and can expect Linux kernel support for a decade or so.

[1] https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers

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Yes, see https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/ for an overview. Despite being hosted on GitHub and having an issue tracker, it is a documentation-only project, not software.

Thank you. Usb3 devices supporting AP mode looks interesting.

Have you had a look at AsiaRF[1]? If you are building an access point you are probably looking for more specific cards. You do miss out on things like hardware offloading if you go down that route afaik though but it may not matter due to the extra processing power you tend to get.

I don't know much about it but things like DBDC/MIMO are probably wanted. Other people may be able to comment more about this though.

I just went down the route of using a Banana Pi R3 with OpenWRT in the end though[2]. The R4 does exist now with Wifi 7 though[3].

[1] https://asiarf.com/product-category/wi-fi/wi-fi-module/wi-fi... [2] https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R3 [3] https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R4

Thank you. I hadn't looked at the banana pi - looks interesting.

I would imagine that anything supported by openwrt and has good feedback from the community would be solid.

I've found it tricky to find updated hw with openwrt support - and tricky to find devices that is easy to buy the correct hw version of.

If you don't want wifi6 or 5ghz support, it's easier.

Try intel ax201, it works great for me and it's still relatively cheap.... works great on x86_64, not sure about risc/arm.

(not affiliated, don't work for intel, have a bunch of other cards, most were a pain).

iwlwifi devices do not have 5GHz AP mode :(

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