Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Wifi adaptor recommendations

[Joel Wirāmu Pauling]

Openwrt's build system is great. But as others have said running any non
single purpose router at your edge has a lot of drawbacks. Not least that
usable pcie wireless cards that work well in station mode are expensive.
Whereas you can get the same chip in wifi router form for pennies AND you
get a whole SoC platform and switch to go with it. You can always use you
general purpose machine as a router and have the AP just be your air
interface. But seriously Openwrt is MUCH easier to manage and cheaper.
On May 25, 2016 10:49 AM, "Duncan" <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> wrote:

Joel Wirāmu Pauling posted on Tue, 24 May 2016 22:04:02 -0700 as
excerpted:

[N replaced with G in a followup, editing it inline here to help anyone
who finds only this post later.]

> [G} DOES NOT HELP at hotels. [G] over 2.4ghz forces ALL stations on that
> broadcast bandwidth (yes even those not participating) to downgrade to
> Legacy mode ( this behaviour is stupid, but that's what we get for
> backwards compatibility of mac80211 that should hace been abandonded
> after G for a complete redesign ). And there is always some device in
> hotels that ensures you will almost never get anything useable out on
> 2.4ghz channels.
>
> 5ghz (a and ac or a+n) ammeloriates this, and because of the narroweer
> and more abundant bands and channel options.

Valuable tip.  Thanks!

> The chances are however likely you're get shapped to hell by their
> captive portal before either of these issues. That class of hotel in the
> states you will be lucky with 3 mbit per device, be happy with 10 or 15
> for the premium paid step option.

3 Mbit... isn't the 640 Kbit I was using on DSL for awhile.  AFAIK 3 Mbit
was what the cable modem was capped at when I first got cable internet.
(Some places were 1.5 Mbit still but Cox had upgraded most of their
territory to 3 Mbit by that point.)  It's usable.  I just won't be able
to do package sources updates and watch youtube at 1080p any longer.  I
may not be able to do 1080p without buffering at all.  But 720p for a few
months won't kill me, especially since a lot of content is either 720p
original/max or 1080p still image anyway.

> As others have said it is time to replace your G device (not least
> because you are a culprit of said above behaviour ;-) ... you can get
> 3x3 dual band dual proc ath9k+ath10k routers that are openwrt-able for
> 50-70$ (i liked the tplink ac1750 v2 As a budget buy, but i hear the
> v3's require using lftp mode to flash ).
>
> Look on openwrt.org for suggestions.

Makes sense.

Ultimately I want to put together an amd64-based router, as I said, in
ordered to be able to put gentoo on it, and build at least base packages
for it and my main machine at the same time.  The problem I'm hoping to
solve is that openwrt is great, but it's different than my main machine
and single purpose, so I really don't have time to learn how to master it
properly.  Similarly, when I had an x86 netbook, I had a 32-bit chroot
image on the main machine to build its packages, but I found it was lucky
to get upgrades once a year, which made them always a major pain.  So I
decided making everything amd64 based and building most packages only
once, was definitely the way to go.

But $50-70 for temporary solution of a few months, and as a fallback when
I do get the amd64-based router, isn't bad and can be considered a minor
expense associated with the temporary, especially given that I'll not be
having to worry about rent or utilities.  I /may/ not even worry about
reflashing it to openwrt, but I definitely want to keep the option open,
so want an openwrt compatible device.

> Bridge mode is a BS proprietary method ONLY implemented on bcm2xxx
> chips. You can achieve what you want with relayd (Bridges l2 broadcast
> domain of ANY two networks regardless) on ANY router running openwrt.

Thanks.  Another valuable tip. =:^)


I'll be working thru Friday, but have the weekend and early next week
(thru Wednesday anyway) off for the move.  So unless I simply reconfigure
the G for the first few days and see how it goes, I'll probably make the
trip to Fry's Sat/Sun/Mon, of course cross-checking frys.com against the
openwrt site to get an openwrt compatible before I go.


So there's a few more days left for recommendations if anyone else has
any. =:^)

--
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman