Re: AX200 running 11a????

On Wed, Apr 6, 2022 at 3:37 PM <jbo@insane.engineer> wrote:

> Hello Kevin,
>
> According to the corresponding man page iwlwifi currently only supports
> 802.11a/b/g. Personally I've only seen 802.11a working on my AX201.
>
> Support for ac is supposed to follow soon. Support for ax is definitely
> also planned but will probably not happen anytime soon.
>
> Alternatively, you can always spawn a small bhyve VM, run a suitable Linux
> distro in there, pass through the card and have the VM act as a gateway.
> There's even an out-of-the-box solution available: net/wifibox
>
>
> Best regards,
> ~ Joel
>

Yes, only a/b/g are supported, but 11a is the sort of first update to the
original 802.11 to enable OFDM and is limited to the 5GHz. Since the card
supports 2.4, as well, it seems that 11g is appropriate. It's odd that it
shows 11a. I have yet to see a true 11a device as it was 5 GHz only  and
did not work on less expensive 2.4 GHz radios.

I know 11n and 11ac are not yet available from iwlwifi. 11n should
significantly improve performance, though not as much as 11ac and 11ax
will. I assume that 11n is supported by the linux driver and was disabled
by Bjorn to simplify getting the older, simpler modes working. I'm hoping
that it might come fairly soon.

After playing around with my system, this may not be an issue. I suspect
that, when the AX200 connects to my router, it always runs on 5 GHz and
calls it 11a which makes sense, I guess. My old laptop connected to the
same cable modem at  5 GHz and the iwn driver called it 11g. That would
mean it is probably working as intended. Does your AP have a single ssid
for 5G and 2.4G? Mine does. That might explain it. To an associating node,
it looks like it's just 5G (11a) unless it flips over to 2.4Gh and then
looks like 11g, I guess. Hmm.

I'm, looking at wifibox and I may give it a try. The idea of bringing up a
VM just to access the network card seems a bit extreme, but if it works...

Thanks!
-- 
Kevin Oberman, Part time kid herder and retired Network Engineer
E-mail: rkoberman@gmail.com
PGP Fingerprint: D03FB98AFA78E3B78C1694B318AB39EF1B055683