Re: An AR9280 as an Access Point

2016-10-14 Thread physkets 
Thanks a lot guys! Then I think I will consider it.

Stefan Sperling, To use 802.11a, I will need to buy the dual-band antennae. But 
PC Engines advises against doing that. They prefer the regular antenna "for 
best gain in a specific frequency band"
ref: http://www.pcengines.ch/antsmadb.htm

Re: An AR9280 as an Access Point

2016-10-12 Thread Stefan Sperling 
On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 05:01:52PM -0400, mabi wrote:
> I am using an Atheros AR9281 in a Soekris box with OpenBSD 5.9 as access 
> point and I am quite disappointed with it. Often I get disconnected from the 
> access point and all I can see on the OpenBSD side is tons of timeout 
> messages in the kernel log such as:
> 
> 
> athn0: device timeout

This usually means the hardware is having trouble transmitting packets.

Upgrade to 6.0! It contains changes which affect your setup.
And try a different channel. And try 11a mode.
And if it's an old Soekris (pre-net5501) try more modern hardware.

Generally it would be nice to have much better AP support but that's not
High prio right now. We simply don't have enough devs who work on wifi.

Re: An AR9280 as an Access Point

2016-10-12 Thread mabi 
I am using an Atheros AR9281 in a Soekris box with OpenBSD 5.9 as access point 
and I am quite disappointed with it. Often I get disconnected from the access 
point and all I can see on the OpenBSD side is tons of timeout messages in the 
kernel log such as:






athn0: device timeout

I hope for you that that the AR9280 chip does a better job.


 Original Message 
Subject: An AR9280 as an Access Point
Local Time: October 11, 2016 6:04 PM
UTC Time: October 11, 2016 4:04 PM
From: physk...@tutanota.com
To: misc@openbsd.org

Hello!

I'd asked a related question on the OpenBSD subreddit, and someone
pointed me here. Hope this is appropriate.
https://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd/comments/56lzhu/which_wifi_card_to_make_an_access_point

Does anyone know how good a WiFi Access Point I could make of the
Atheros AR9280 card (Compex-wle200nx) offered by the guys at PC Engines:
http://www.pcengines.ch/wle200nx.htm

Thanks a lot!

Re: An AR9280 as an Access Point

2016-10-12 Thread Liviu Daia 
On 12 October 2016, Liviu Daia  wrote:
> On 11 October 2016, physkets  wrote:
> > Hello!
> >
> > I'd asked a related question on the OpenBSD subreddit, and someone
> > pointed me here. Hope this is appropriate.
> > https://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd/comments/56lzhu/which_wifi_card_to_make_an_access_point
> > 
> > Does anyone know how good a WiFi Access Point I could make of the
> > Atheros AR9280 card (Compex-wle200nx) offered by the guys at PC Engines:
> > http://www.pcengines.ch/wle200nx.htm
> 
> I've been using one at home for maybe years.  It mostly works, but

s/years/two years/

> my experience with it hasn't been great.  For whatever reasons the rate
> of packet loss increased steadily over time.  I've since re-purposed an
> old Netgear WNDR 3800 as a bridged AP, and I'm much happier with it.
> 805.11n, full power management, and no dropped connections ever, despite
> it being located in the exact same spot as the old AP.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Liviu Daia


Regards,

Liviu Daia

Re: An AR9280 as an Access Point

2016-10-12 Thread Liviu Daia 
On 11 October 2016, physkets  wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I'd asked a related question on the OpenBSD subreddit, and someone
> pointed me here. Hope this is appropriate.
> https://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd/comments/56lzhu/which_wifi_card_to_make_an_access_point
> 
> Does anyone know how good a WiFi Access Point I could make of the
> Atheros AR9280 card (Compex-wle200nx) offered by the guys at PC Engines:
> http://www.pcengines.ch/wle200nx.htm

I've been using one at home for maybe years.  It mostly works, but
my experience with it hasn't been great.  For whatever reasons the rate
of packet loss increased steadily over time.  I've since re-purposed an
old Netgear WNDR 3800 as a bridged AP, and I'm much happier with it.
805.11n, full power management, and no dropped connections ever, despite
it being located in the exact same spot as the old AP.

Regards,

Liviu Daia

Re: An AR9280 as an Access Point

2016-10-12 Thread Kapfhammer, Stefan 
The card from pcengines is well supported by OpenBSD.
Use the athn(4) driver. Works nice in my APU2 :)

‎http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-6.0/man4/athn.4

For your use case look at the end of the man page
@bugs and @caveeats


Freundliche Grüße / Regards
-stefan kapfhammer
  Originalnachricht
Von: physkets
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 12. Oktober 2016 16:20
An: misc@openbsd.org
Betreff: An AR9280 as an Access Point


Hello!

I'd asked a related question on the OpenBSD subreddit, and someone
pointed me here. Hope this is appropriate.
https://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd/comments/56lzhu/which_wifi_card_to_make_an_access_point

Does anyone know how good a WiFi Access Point I could make of the
Atheros AR9280 card (Compex-wle200nx) offered by the guys at PC Engines:
http://www.pcengines.ch/wle200nx.htm

Thanks a lot!

Re: An AR9280 as an Access Point

2016-10-12 Thread trondd 
On Tue, October 11, 2016 12:04 pm, physkets wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I'd asked a related question on the OpenBSD subreddit, and someone
> pointed me here. Hope this is appropriate.
> https://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd/comments/56lzhu/which_wifi_card_to_make_an_access_point
>
> Does anyone know how good a WiFi Access Point I could make of the
> Atheros AR9280 card (Compex-wle200nx) offered by the guys at PC Engines:
> http://www.pcengines.ch/wle200nx.htm
>
> Thanks a lot!
>

I have an AR9285 I've had as an AP for 2 years.  Bought off Amazon.  Has
worked fine for my usage.  I have a max of 3 wireless devices in use at a
time and it's fast enough.

Tim.

Re: An AR9280 as an Access Point

2016-10-12 Thread Stefan Sperling 
On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 06:04:55PM +0200, physkets wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> I'd asked a related question on the OpenBSD subreddit, and someone
> pointed me here. Hope this is appropriate.
> https://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd/comments/56lzhu/which_wifi_card_to_make_an_access_point
> 
> Does anyone know how good a WiFi Access Point I could make of the
> Atheros AR9280 card (Compex-wle200nx) offered by the guys at PC Engines:
> http://www.pcengines.ch/wle200nx.htm
> 
> Thanks a lot!
 
Works for me but data rates are usually capped at about 18Mbit/s.

Throughput depends on your environment, e.g. other APs on neighbouring channels.
Neighboring 11n APs tend to compete strongly and steal a lot of bandwidth.
11a mode tends to perform better than 11g because there is usually less
competition for air time.