Arch Linux

qshonuff

Member

Registered: 2011-09-21

Posts: 13

Can anyone recomend an 802.11n wireless card (PCI)?

I seem to be continuously stymied by bad luck with wireless cards.

I had an RT2800, worked "fine" if i was ok with Wireless-G (which i'm not), or i downloaded the specific driver (which gave me Wireless-N but caused random system hangs and
upgrade nightmares)

I just bought an ath9k chipset card, only to find out that this specific card apparently has driver issues as well.

The available online hardware compatibility lists have cards that you just can't get anymore (I'd prefer not to get a card from BobsDiscountNICs.com) :).

So if you have PCI Wireless-N working well in Arch 64 with stock kernel and a card that I can get from newegg or amazon, please let me know!

Thanks.

.:B:.

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Registered: 2006-11-26

Posts: 5,819

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Re: Can anyone recomend an 802.11n wireless card (PCI)?

Ath9k support tends to be pretty ok? I have set up two Atheros-based routers with OpenWrt, and they run very stable (it's Linux as well, so it's ath9k). I recently purchased a new WiFi card for my mom's desktop, and Atheros was pretty much the only option (Intel doesn't do PCI/PCI-E). That was, if I recall correctly, a '150N' TP-Link TL-WN751ND PCI 802.11bgn card - Atheros AR92xx chip. Its PCI-E counterpart is (I believe) called TL-WN781ND.

If the stability of the in-kernel ath9k code isn't to your liking you can always try wireless-compat. I strongly believe manufacturers wouldn't put wireless APs/routers on the market with hardware that didn't have decent support on the platform they sold it with (in this case, 99% Linux for Atheros SoCs).

Nobody can say how things will evolve of course after Qualcomm took over Atheros.

Last edited by .:B:. (2012-02-15 07:26:41)

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Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: Can anyone recomend an 802.11n wireless card (PCI)?

Buying new hardware because of driver bugs in open source drivers that you can hack on is... I'll be harsh... quite foolish.

ath9k does have issues recently, but there's plenty of patches out. Some are committed already, so I second .:B:.'s suggestion of wireless-compat. If that won't work, search the forums regarding workarounds. Then there's always the last resort option of downgrading to a previous kernel.

It's say Atheros is by far the best choice for wifi. Both their pcie (ath5k, ath9k) and usb (ath9k_htc) chips. And that's despite the current driver bugs. It's not like they're the only ones, iwlwifi is buggy too (but there's patches around).

Mr.Elendig

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Registered: 2004-11-07

Posts: 4,092

Re: Can anyone recomend an 802.11n wireless card (PCI)?

http://linuxwireless.org/

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qshonuff

Member

Registered: 2011-09-21

Posts: 13

Re: Can anyone recomend an 802.11n wireless card (PCI)?

I tried wireless-compat, also tried "options ath9k nohwcrypt=1", no luck

As far as http://linuxwireless.org/, goes.... I did manage to find one in stock, it goes all the way up to 802.11_b_! so they're obviously on top of that list, thanks for the tip..

Maybe I'm foolish, but I'm not particularly into hacking opensource drivers, and i don't think that's particularly cost-effective anyway considering new hardware is like $30.

Anyway, thanks, glad to know that the ath9k should work.

I'll join the ath9k mailing list and see if they have anything to say.