Best supported WiFi adapter

CiPHER nl cipher_nl at hotmail.com
Tue Aug 12 21:24:49 UTC 2014


Dear BSD users,

I am looking for the 'best supported WiFi adapter' for use with FreeBSD. I've searched a bit, but could use some help.

My requirements would be:
- use with hostapd (to act as access point; not as client)
- reliable operation without packet loss with a variety of clients in a home network (i.e. not many clients)
- WPA2 security

Nice extra's would be:
- support power saving mode (low power consumption)
- 802.11n support (up to 300Mbps)

At the moment i am using a USB WiFi adapter that uses the 'rum' driver. Though it works in hostap mode, it does not support client power saving. This causes some clients to work while others can only connect to the WiFi but not communicate or ping or do anything. Obviously this is not desirable; i need something that works! Additionally, as someone who is very keen on lowering power consumption especially for 24/7 equipment, i would love the power consumption to be lowered of both the server and the clients connecting via WiFi. Thus power saving mode is highly desired. Having a more modern 'n' 300Mbps network is a nice extra, but no hard requirement. Note that i am in Europe, and 5GHz is not available/allowed as far as i know. 2.4GHz is the norm here.

Now i did some homework, like looking at the Wiki and reading manpages. Also looked at the hardware notes of 10.0-RELEASE. But what i am missing is a list of 'best supported' network adapters, and product names which are known to work properly. Perhaps this should be added to the Wiki, since i can't believe i am the only one looking for a well supported WiFi adapter for use with FreeBSD.

Any suggestion or help is highly appreciated!

Links:

Manpage of rum(4), describing the bug/issue that client power saving has to be disabled; but not all clients offer this option - like Android phones.
- http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=rum&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+10.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html

Wiki on WiFi with many links:
- https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFi

Wiki listing support for newer chips like Atheros AR9287, but no products mentioned which use these chips
- https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFi80211n
- https://wiki.freebsd.org/dev/ath%284%29

Manpage of Atheros ath(4) driver, listing limitations with power saving, incompatbility with WPA with one chipset and even worse, the newer chips like AR9287 are not mentioned:
- http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ath&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+10.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html
 		 	   		  


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