Wifi 6 mini pcie cards?

[Marinoz]

So i was thinking of using my mini pc as a router and i currently run opnsense, but i wanted ap too. I was first thinking about openwrt but then because of openwrt difficulties in proxmox i thought what about use a mini pcie card in opnsense. Is this possibile with any wifi 6 one and if yes which should i get? At the openwrt forum they told me the aw7916 npd from asia rf but it costs a lost. By the way please help me set up the wireless interface.

[Greg_E]

I am probably wrong, but I don't think every wifi card can be an AP, I think they may have special firmware. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong so I can maybe make use of this too.

I've tried making the included wifi card in my old HP T620 into an AP, and I don't remember being successful. That was with pfsense though, so maybe a difference. I might have also tried this with an AWOW J4105 mini-PC and suffered the same failure, but that would have again been PF.

[Marinoz]

Ι've been at the openwrt page reading about ap compatibility and i have to agree. Though my question is if i can setup an internal ap using a WIFI 6 (!) pcie card in my mini pc. Is it possible and if yes how and with what stuff? Thank you for your contribution but i need clear and specific answers  ;)

[cookiemonster]

This is an attempt from Greg to help you but there are so many variables that it is difficult to give a straighter answer without providing context for the pitfalls.
The answer is yes - see - https://docs.opnsense.org/manual/how-tos/interface_wireless_internal.html
But please also note the warning on the page:

FreeBSD supports wireless adapters in access point (infrastructure) mode, but this functionality is limited to some drivers and there may be some, which do not support all options available via the web interface. Please make sure that you buy a wireless card that is supported to avoid these problems.

As a parallel, note the status for Linux https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers
Back to freeBSD, you need to look at the hardware compatibility list. For instance for ver 13.1 Release: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/13.1R/hardware/
Putting it together, for best compatibility you need to look for a freeBSD-supported card (by chipset) and one that can be put in AP mode. The instructions on how are on the manual page I linked.

[Marinoz]

Hey cookkie, is there a popular card out there that someone from the forum has used and made a topic about it ?

[cookiemonster]

Dunno. Your forum search will be as good as mine ;)
But you'll likely come to see that because is a trial and error at the user's expense, most of the time the advice given is to take the alternative route of getting a separate device into the OPN port or switch downstream from OPN in AP mode. I use eeros and all works great.
I appreciate that is not as cheap as a £20 wfi card and different geographies have different availabilities and prices though.

[chemlud]

I use an ARM device with wifi stick in access point mode running linux (bridged with eth0). I have one opnsense with wifi as WAN, but that's a different piece of cake.

wifi as an access point on opnsense directly: I don't think you will find a single thread on this forum supporting this setup, not to speak of wifi 6

https://wiki.freebsd.org/dev

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.0R/hardware/

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/wireless/hardware.html

[Marinoz]

I use an ARM device with wifi stick in access point mode running linux (bridged with eth0). I have one opnsense with wifi as WAN, but that's a different piece of cake.

wifi as an access point on opnsense directly: I don't think you will find a single thread on this forum supporting this setup, not to speak of wifi 6

https://wiki.freebsd.org/dev

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.0R/hardware/

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/wireless/hardware.html

i guess then i will have to stick either with openwrt in proxmox that is never been experimented for wifi purposes or buy an external consumer router

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I can recommend the hAP-ax2 by Mikrotik ;)

Pros:

* sturdy design
* low power consumption
* therefore little heat
* all the features at least I could wish for

Cons:

* need to learn RouterOS
* default setup is for a complete home gateway/firewall, so you need to disable a ton of stuff for AP/layer2 only operation

[Marinoz]

i already got a mini pc bro i need a pcie card to make it act as a wifi ap

[Patrick M. Hausen]

FreeBSD/OPNsense cannot act as a WiFi AP with reasonable performance and modern features.

[doktornotor]

As noted above by others, there is zero support for ac/ax in FreeBSD. Even 11n is not fully implemented, LOL. Move on and get a proper WiFi AP.

[chemlud]

I prefer a raspberry pi 2b and a wifi stick with built-in (!!) firmware in current RaspiOS Bullseye. Actually two of them for seamless wifi throughout the house. Choose the wifi stick wisely.

Setup of the bridge with NetworkManager is quite straight-forward.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/configuration.html#use-your-raspberry-pi-as-a-network-bridge

You have control over the OS of your AP ;-).

No configuration needed in opnsense.

[Greg_E]

OK, I'll ask this. Suppose I buy an ax version AP like this one https://mikrotik.com/product/cap_ax ... Why does it need all of the router OS to run it if the firewall/router is handling all the vlans and stuff? This is an area that I just haven't need to get into.

As far as learning router OS, there are a few good books on Amazon, and if you get the Kindle version they can be pretty cheap. Not sure how many have been updated to RouterOS 7 yet, but I'm guessing v6.x is close enough for learning the ropes.

[doktornotor]

You do not need any router to get WiFi. Get an access point.