Hey guys.  Been using openwrt since almost the beginning, but I'm coming up short on this one. 

Does anyone know of a known good working pci-e card that works under openwrt x86?   

Ideally, I'd like it to have 2.4/5g support. 

Thanks!

Check this page out: https://www.thinkpenguin.com/catalog/wi … g-gnulinux

There's a number of cards to choose from, and they are all guaranteed to have truly open source drivers. The amount of supported distributions speaks volumes. The cards are mostly 802.11N, though, so no 5 GHz

Well, yes, but linux support doesn't guarantee openwrt support.  Each of the wifi cards I have bought so far works great under gentoo, but refuses to work under openwrt. 

So, anyone actually get a specific pci-e card working under openwrt x86/x64?

Which cards are those?  OpenWrt gets the drivers from the mainstream kernel. 

Atheros "ath9k" hardware has excellent compatibility.  The ath10k for 802.11ac is good but not perfect.  You will probably need two cards in the machine to operate simultaneously on both bands.  Dual band cards almost all only work on one band at a time.

Note that unlike a desktop distribution, OpenWrt x86 does not include any wifi drivers by default.  You have to identify the chipset in your card and install the proper driver.

Atheros AR5B22 2.4/5GHz+Bluetooth4.0 Mini PCI-E Wireless WiFi Card 300M

This is a Wifi/BT combo card.  It comes up at AR3012 in lsusb.  From the internet, it has a AR9462 wifi chip.  Ath3k does recognize the BT part of the card, but ath9k refuses to recognize the wifi.

Works great in my laptop under gentoo (ath9k) and I'm posting using it now. 

Dell Intel 533AN_HMW vPRO WiFi Link 5300
Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 Model 633ANHMW

These are two different intel cards, but openwrt doesn't even see these in lsusb.  Work fine in gentoo under my laptop. 

IMC Networks 802.11 n/g/b Wireless LAN USB Mini-Card (rt2870)

This cheap card came with the system and works in openwrt, but the range is terrible.  Signal drops off in close to 15 feet.  In my laptop under gentoo the range is also terrible.  Think this is just bad hardware. 

I use buildroot and imagebuilder, because the default images don't include my wifi or usb drivers in this particular box.   I believe I have installed all the relevant packages for these cards. 

What card are you using that works?

(Last edited by clearchris on 20 Aug 2017, 21:58)

TPLINK TL-WDN4800 PCIE adapter (ath9k based)

I used that once ago for the same purpose you described, but like the person above mentioned, you can either broadcast 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz with this card, but not both simultaneously.. for that you'll need two of them.

Have a look at pcengines.ch ; The WiFi cards for APU2 work for me running LEDE.

Thanks everyone.  I have a Compex WLE200NX on order.  I'll report back either way. 

In the meantime, I had a thought, I'd take my gentoo kernel config and see if I can use that as my openwrt kernel config.  Maybe there's a kernel issue...

I found out the problem, but only after getting yet another card.  At least I bought the WLE200NX as part of a Compex WPE72NX, so that router and card will be put to use. 

The problem is that this mini-pc only takes USB mini pci-e cards.  There's apparently a difference. 

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q … -does-this

(Last edited by clearchris on 26 Aug 2017, 01:28)