Re: How to determine if WiFi AP is compatible?

On Mon, 28 Mar 2022 10:52:03 -0700
Eric Thomas <eric@ericthomas.net> wrote:

> I'm trying to determine if a WiFi AP is compatible with OpenBSD. For
> example, checking the [Wireless FAQ's](
> https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq6.html#Wireless), I don't see whether the
> chipset used by the [UniFi Access Point WiFe 6 Pro](
> https://dl.ui.com/ds/u6-pro_ds.pdf) is compatible or not.

You want to know if your "wife" is compatible? I guess divorces can
get expensive so you want to ensure you get the right one.

OpenBSD I don't think has ever been ported to UniFi hardware, so
installing OpenBSD on one in place of the stock UniFi firmware likely
cannot be done. Out of the box they're Linux based, either using
`mips32el` or `arm64` hardware internally. (You can deploy your SSH
key to them via UniFi management and poke around as `root` if you like.)

> I want to know if I need use a particular [switch](
> https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-switching/products/usw-lite-16-poe)
> to plug the WiFi AP into, or whether I can plug the WiFi AP directly into
> the OpenBSD server.

Biggest limitation here is what the AP needs for power. I recently
bought a couple of WiFi6 units; a U6-LR and a U6-Lite. These both
required 48V passive PoE, and Ubiquiti don't ship such a power supply
with their devices. You may have a switch that supports this, or you
might use the switch you just linked to.

For mine I used two of these:
https://www.telcoantennas.com.au/12vdc-to-48vdc-poe-passive-power-over-ethernet-inj

Limitation of these is the uplink is only 100Mbps instead of 1Gbps, but
in my case I don't care much: NBN Internet connection here is only
25Mbps and if I want speed, I'll plug in an Ethernet cable.

Haven't tried connecting an OpenBSD client to any of them but the
routers so far are completely oblivious to them, as they are of the
Ethernet switches (Linksys, Cisco, Netgear … none of them listed as
being "compatible" with OpenBSD either).

Basically if the AP complies with the IEEE standards, the client shouldn't care.
--
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.