On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 02:28:18PM +0200, Jan Stary wrote: > Another card shows up as fxp(4) which is Intel EtherExpress.
That is not a wifi device. It is Ethernet. > Another is ath(4). It works, but e.g. the ipad reports > "suboptimal performance" and suggests a wifi that can do 802.11n/ac > (not that I understand the differences). > > I ended up with an athn(4): > > athn0 at pci0 dev 12 function 0 "Atheros AR5416" rev 0x01: irq 9 > athn0: MAC AR5416 rev 2, RF AR2133 (3T2R), ROM rev 2, address > 00:1d:6a:6b:03:07 > > When it works, it's the fastest. But occasionaly messages say > "athn0: device timeout" and the clients lose connection. > There are some netstat -I athn0 [io]errors as well. > > Being an AR5416 with AR2133, athn(4) says my card should do 3T3R, > > The MAC/Baseband Processor can be an AR5416 or an AR5418. > The radio can be an AR2122, AR2133, AR5122 or an AR5133 chip. > The AR2133 chip operates in the 2GHz spectrum and supports > up to 3 transmit paths and 3 receiver paths (3T3R). > > but dmesg says 3T2R. Is that an error in itself? Is that the ":2" here? > AR5008-3NG (AR5416+AR2133) 2GHz 3x3:2 PCI/CardBus No error. It means the card can do 802.11n STBC, which we don't support yet. STBC is optional and can used to send a data stream redundantly for better reliability. STBC requires that the sender uses 1 more antenna than the receiver is using, hence 3 Tx but only 2 Rx. If we ever add support for STBC there won't be any need to explicitly configure it. So don't worry about this. > I'm not sure what the "TxR:S " means exactly. Max number of antennas for transmit (usually 2, 3 with STBC), max number of antennas for receive (2), and the number of spatial streams (2) each of which carries a subset of the data. > Does the S stand for 2 supported of the 3 it has? S stands for Spatial Streams. You can research that term but you don't need to understand this. However, one important thing: > I only plugged _one_ of those dongle antennas > into the tiny connectoron the the card. Is that related to the 3T2R? > Is that related to the timeouts? (Please excuse my wifi HW ignorance.) You *must* plug at least 2 antennas if you want to use the card in 11n mode. Otherwise you will see packet loss. If you only have 1 antenna, disable 11n by adding a line that says 'mode 11g' at the top of hostname.athn0. > Generally, what are the options nowadays for running an AP? The athn card you have is a good option. I would recommend using 5 GHz but your card does not support it. Apart from that, this card is great. You might want to look into adding a second antenna so you can benefit from 11n mode. You might have to drill holes into the ALIX case for this. An ALIX I use runs in 11a mode for this reason and it's good enough for me.
