Re: Hardware for Access Point on OpenBSD

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> 1. jan. 2020 kl. 16:54 skrev List <list@md5collisions.eu>:
>
> Hi *,
> I am currently building a home router based upon OpenBSD.
> I therefore need some kind of WIFI Hardware. This piece of hardware
> needs to be connected over usb.
> Do you have any suggestions or recommendations ? As far as I can see
> it's pretty hard to find an antenna which is connected via USB an runs
> on a supported chipset. It is easy to get your hands on a
> realtek-chipset driven device. But urtw(4) doesn't support Host AP
> mode. Only ones that do are: athn(4), ral(4), ath(4).
> Finding those is hard.
>
> Maybe you guys know things I couldn't find ?

Probably not the answer you want, but anyway:

The easy way out is to buy the best possible access point you can afford, let that one handle the link-level («radio») bits, leave the TCP/IP level bits to your very capable OpenBSD box that has the access point connected directly to one of its wired Ethernet interfaces.

The important thing is that way you get support for stuff that isn't yet supported in the OpenBSD drivers such as the newer wifi version protocols (-ac or whatever they renamed it to) while retaining control over the things that OpenBSD does better using familiar OpenBSD tools. Or as some might put it, the best of both worlds.

All the best,
Peter

—
Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team
http://bsdly.blogspot.com/ http://www.bsdly.net/ http://www.nuug.no/
"Remember to set the evil bit on all malicious network traffic"
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