YMMV, but in general ath9k supported cards will work well. The one mentioned above came from an old iMac.
My experiences with newer 5 GHz AC cards are not good. I tried:
I could not get them detected at all by my motherboard. Also beware of Intel cards: some will not work in AP / managed mode.
Any particular model number you can recommend? I just need this for Guest network, rest is taken care of by AP's...
This particular card has model number AR5BXB92. I would like to suggest to search Ali Express for "AR9280" and check the reviews.
Why not config an AP for a second SSID and put it on a different vlan? You will save a lot of hassle.
I use Archer C2's as AP's. LEDE/OpenWRT for Archer C2 has buggy 2.4GHz support so I only run them on 5GHz. At the same time, I have lot's of IoT stuff that I do not trust that can only talk on 2.4GHz band. Also, It is much easier to set up client isolation and guest WiFi on router itself than fiddle with four AP's, VLA's etc.
Pop an EAP 225 v3 onto an ethernet port, set up 2 SSIDs one for regular users, one for guest. Finished in 10 minutes, profit.
alternative is probably spend around half as much in hardware, fool around with driver issues, at least 25% chance you'll have to eat the hardware or return it due to some incompatibility somewhere, and you'll probably get worse RF performance (the antennas built into a dedicated AP are going to be better than whatever you plug in as an expansion card).
Yes. But I also use my AP's as a switch. I have one of them acting as a switch for TV, set-top-box, computer and SONOS soundbar at the same time it is doing it's AP:ing. I also suceeded in enabling 802.11r fast roaming. So while dedicated AP's are nice, it would also involve investing into switches, PoE-switches etc.
I'm talking about just adding 1 AP to what you have, and making that ONE do the guest stuff.
I kinda hate wires, antennas and wire kludges. If possible, I will try to replace WiFi card and make x86 router behave in the same way as old Archer C7 (as I can easily copy the config from current router). Otherwise, I will replace my home-grown AP's for Ubiquity stuff which has guest stuff figured out.
Thanks for your guide-works like a dream !
i5 -2400 -4 core - fast as f_ _ k !
Great to hear, sounds awesome!
I've been wanting to build something like this since 2017 but for my use case the x86 platform is a total overkill as I live in a place that wired/4g speeds are STILL being developed but this guide is too good to be ignored. Bookmarked and will follow suit once I decided to kill time and fiddle with hardware. Thanks!
Please share your experiences when you get to it.
I used until now LEDE 17.01.4 on x86 inside a ESXi VM (CPU is Intel Atom C2758) without any problem but now I need to upgrade my router because VPN performance.
With my CPU I can get 100Mbps (roughly) with openVPN connection (openvpn is monothread), so to get more speed with VPN I use normally 3 openvpn simultaneous connections (balanced with mwan3).
To get more speed with VPN connections, I would like to switch to LEDE/openWRT installed on bare metal (I would like to use i7 CPU on a ASRock Mobo) but I am only in doubt about drivers support on LEDE/OpenWRT (specially LAN drivers).
What do you think about it?
Drivers exist for most LAN chips. If the driver for your chip is not included in the default build, it can be a little difficult to get OpenWrt off the ground, especially if you don't have a serial port.
It's up to you of course, but an i7 is overkill. If your CPU supports aes-ni which even recent 3000 series celerons do, you can get several hundred Mbps from even low end chips, maybe 300 or 400 Mbps, look for benchmarks etc.
I use OpenWRT/LEDE on x86 fanless PC running 2.1GHz N3050 Celeron. I can hit ~270Mbit with OpenVPN using 256-bit encryption.
are you kidding me? that little CPU can do that much SQM? is that up and down? some of those low end or rather low volt chips barley pull 2+k pass marks.
if you're right then this ought to be a bad mama jama. This CPU pulls 4k passmarks. IF your right then i'd never need a 6k or 7 passmark low volt chip and can save a ton of money. assuming encrypted DNS doesn't change the game or add a huge load. (along with VPN and VLANs)
Since the initial question (How to install LEDE on x86) has been answered already and this thread is slowly drifting offtopic, I'm closing it now.
Should further questions regarding installation of OpenWrt on x86 arise, please open a new topic.