[GLLUG] A USB WiFi dongle that works as Host/Master

Robert McKay robert at mckay.com
Thu Oct 11 11:27:17 UTC 2012


On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 06:41:24 +0100 (BST), damion.yates at gmail.com wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Oct 2012, Robert McKay wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 8 Aug 2012 11:25:51 +0100, Matthew Copperwaite wrote:
>> > Hi Guys,
>> > A little bored of all the requests to events going on all over the
>> > country that most people can't attend, so I have a serious 
>> question
>> > that I can't seem to find the answer to.
>> >
>> > I was wondering if anyone knew of or owns a USB WiFi dongle
>> > (preferably capable of .11n) that works in Host/Master mode so it
>> > can be run as an access point.
>
> This used to be a poorly understood (I don't think many people
> knew/cares about running hostapd) and annoyingly complex 
> hardware/driver
> specific issue.
>
> However as I understand it, ever since kernel 2.6.32 this problem all
> but went away with the rewrite of the wifi stack, to have generic
> mac80211/lib80211 modules provide a new standard api for 
> wpa_supplicant
> and hostapd to be able to do what was needed.

I think there are still relatively few USB wifi devices that work with 
hostapd using the nl80211 driver (which is what I was using). I tried 3 
that I had lying around my house; none worked - so I purchased the 
AWUS036NH. This was running kernel 2.6.38.

> So the answer should be, pretty much any wifi dongle you read works 
> at
> all under linux.  You should no longer have to additionally qualify 
> your
> search with "and can do ad-hoc, supports wpa via wpa_supplicant, can
> work with hostapd".

That certainly is has not been my experience. All the wifi dongles I 
have work fine under windows in host mode, but only this new Alfa 
AWUS036NH works on Linux. They all work fine under Linux as wpa clients 
using wpa_supplicant and in ad-hoc mode though.

> The forums used to be full of people with general success in getting
> wifi working at all, but a complete lack of understanding that only
> certain hw would permit all features.  This should no longer be true.

I'm afraid that it is still true.

> I had good success with a TRENDnet zd12xx chipset device, sorry I 
> can't
> remember more details, but this was super reliable and worked with
> hostapd ONLY after 2.6.32!

Does it work with multiple BSSIDs? I can't seem to get that working 
with the AWUS036NH so I might get one of those to try if it does.

Cheers,
Rob




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