used to be you could swap out mini pci-e wifi modules. Intel makes good ones as well as a number of other manufacturers. They sometimes have connectable antenna that snake around the case.
My (current) 5-6 year old Lenovo ideapad came with some garbage wifi card that used to get disconnected every 2-3 hours. I swapped it out with an Intel card for around $30 iirc and still happy with it.
You can grab an Intel BE200 module (EDIT: which may be platform dependent, see below) or similar for about 30 bucks. For latest generation client side Wi-Fi cards Intel has traditionally had the better quality options on the driver side, not to give an illusion the cards and driver are perfect though. The limitation is you can't have a fully integrated system, like a MacBook. If the storage is upgradeable there is a high chance the Wi-Fi is.
Realtek RTL8922A and RTL8952A based cards will support AP mode, I'm sure. The driver (rtw89) got upstreamed a while ago and support for the new chip got added this Linux kernel release cycle. Hopefully the new generation modules will be available soon, too...
I use the previous generation RTL8852A in my homegrown wifi router, and it works nicely as AP with the same driver and hostapd. The modules are small, and fit to laptops. (the ones I buy are actually some stock for laptops, that gets re-sold as spare parts I think)
Yeah plenty of client cards have AP mode firmware, I don't recommend it though unless you want a particularly low end AP (outside of the use case of a fully open firmware AP, in which case fully open firmware older cards are generally the only way).
Do you have any specifics for these particular devices? Have you inspected the driver and firmware and found it lacking? Or did you test them and something came up?
Internet is full of bad experiences, but mostly from windows laptop users and from 2-3 years ago, around the time the driver was being upstreamed to Linux. It has been solid and growing in features ever since. Throughtput is pretty nice 500mbit/s for a single 80MHz channel setup I'm using and stable.
There's no other choice for actively manufacturer supported wifi device usable for AP for Linux anyway. Broadcom drivers are unsupported for years, and firmware heavy with lack of firmware updates from manufacturer. Bad combo. Intel is not for APs. And that's about it.
The Wi-Fi 7 certified program only started a few days ago so nothing is through certification yet. That said Intels adapters up til this point have always been and . They already have driver support in Linux as well.
just because everyone convinced you too use uefi as your true base OS doesn't mean it's not a driver issue. no matter how much you try to cover your own eyes.
Not necessarily, if it's an Intel module it might be a CNVi module instead of normal PCIe module, meaning it can only work on Intel platforms (because half of the WiFi hardware is actually within the CPU/chipset; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNVi for more information).
Both laptops (sans Apple) and desktop PCs (even USFFs) tend to use the NGFF M2.2230 form factor cards, typically with two antenna connectors.
Yes, even your super fancy high-end desktop PC motherboard ultimately has an NGFF M2.2230 WiFi and BlueTooth combo card plugged in somewhere. It might be ultimately buried under a large VRM or other heatsink, but it's there nonetheless. Granted, replacing these sometimes necessitates entirely removing the motherboard from the case.
Note for desktop PCs that you'll likely hook up an actual antennas to the RP-SMA connectors on the rear IO panel. Especially so if you're looking to take advantage of 6GHz spectrum. These antennas are a far less popular include with motherboards (even high end ones) than years ago, but they're generally only about $15-20 to purchase if you need better signal and range.
Are there any wi-fi dongles - or even PCI extensions - for PCs that are worth getting? Everywhere I look, it's usually down to hoping the one that comes with your motherboard is any good, and those aren't easy to upgrade every now and then.
This is very much the opposite of my experience, M.2 Wifi modules are very standard, cheap and solid. All my motherboards have one installed for the wifi and it's trivial to swap it out. I have just replaced it when it stopped working or I wanted some Wifi/Bluetooth spec it didn't support.
The Intel AX210 is the most recent one I've used, but I assume they'll release a WiFi 7 version.
M.2 is just PCI-E at the end of the day, so should be entirely viable to adapt one if something didn't have an M.2 A-key slot.
Intel PCI-e cards are some of the best and quite reasonably priced (~$35 for 6E), unfortunately their Wi-Fi 7 card is only compatible with Intel motherboards so far.
I upgraded my previous laptop from an older intel ac wifi chip to a ax210 chip (6E). It really helped reduce latency and reliability especially on the 5G band. A good upgrade, it cost like $20 at the time.
You can often find these mini m2 board to full size pci-e adapter cards or find these adapters pre-mounted on a board for sale.
A lot of the motherboard ones do turn out to be upgradeable, basically just laptop m.2 cards in a custom built portion of the board. That said, if you want a low-touch option a PCIe form factor adaptor is generally the best bet. You can get them for ~10 dollars on Amazon. If the back of your case is a bad position you can get combo RP-SMA cable extenders/antenna mounts for about $20 (that'd be like the little antenna pair on a wire most motherboard options come with). For the actual Wi-Fi card you can use a standard m.2 2232 laptop card at that point.
MediaTek has been doing wifi 7 PCIe chips for a bit, but it seems like they're only really available on AMD motherboards so far. :(
Reports from Intel side are that maybe they've started doing something fishy or some-such with their m.2 cards? Folks on non-Intel can't seem to use them.
The lag here is alas, in my view all too typical. I'd really love for USB & m.2 cards to be out much faster, to speed adoption, but it feels like the industry always slow walks this shit out.
Unless it's changed in the last 5 minutes, the second paragraph seems to have an explanation:
> One of the biggest benefits of Wi-Fi 7 is that it allows for one device to connect to your router on multiple bands — a feature called Multi-Link Operation — which gives your laptop options when it comes to where to funnel its packets. That means that when your 5GHz band is at capacity, it’ll just send the data down the 6GHz pipe, and vice versa. The result should be lower latency when you’re on a busy network, which is critical when you’re not able to wire up with ethernet.
Read the comment before reading the article...but it wasn't that bad. It's not a technical deep dive but more a short commentary post as a heads-up that it's available now even if not everyone is talking about.
It also lists the biggest benefit for gamers (It's posted in the "gaming" section of Verge) in the second paragraph.
I disagree. This reads like a hastily-written article.
Take these quotes from just one paragraph:
"now is a fine time to start looking at Wi-Fi 7 routers."
"There weren’t a lot announced at the show.... "
"You will probably want to be cautious about pulling the trigger, though."
"The choices are still a little slim and mostly still expensive."
This basically contradicts the title as well as the first line of the paragraph. How is that supposed to be useful for me?
If instead, the article were something along the lines of "Wi-Fi 7 just came out, but don't buy yet", then that might be different. The author is trying to put a happy tone on a negative article. Whether that's the editors or the write, I don't know, but the output is a waste of time for people who read the headline thinking wi-fi 7 has taken off.
> - No explanation of why AI headlines overshadowed Wi-Fi 7.. one is taking steps for changing what "work" looks like for Humanity while the other is..?
Author wanted to fit in the term AI in there. Drives traffic. Has electrolytes - it's got what the NPC crave.
Wifi7 is cool, but effectively no devices support it yet. So, having it launched is a good first step, but there is no reason to go drop a ton of cash on a new router until you actually have things that can connect to it.
For me it'll be at least a year before wifi 7 matters (probably longer because I'm lazy, cheap, and perfectly happy with wifi 6 currently).
My typical phone upgrade schedule doesn't have me buying a new one until... eh, probably 2027 or so. By then I imagine I'll have a wifi7 router at home.
> For me it'll be at least a year before wifi 7 matters
Probably longer for me. WiFi currently meets my needs just fine, so there is no reason to toss out perfectly good equipment to upgrade. When my current APs break and I need to replace them, they'll have whatever standards happen to be on the market at the time.
Yeah, seriously... How excited they expect us to get? Freaking AI made its debut and has accelerated nonstop since and y'all want us talking about new WiFi versions? I didn't know there was versions!
I have 2GB fiber and can only get 250MB on WIFI. Faster speeds helps out with app updates, syncing/backing up photos etc. Especially noticeable on my PS5 when there are game/system updates.
Yeah, most people are using their phone as their main computing device and have an "unlimited" <cough, bullshit> data plan and just use that.
If they have wifi at home they're using Comcrap (and the like) equipment that was set up for them. They have zero clue how all that works. And honestly, why should they? Most people really don't need to know. They just need it to work if they're paying for it.
All of your examples have the new thing showing an obvious benefit over the old thing. Tell me, if I upgraded every device I own to Wi-Fi 7 - or any, for that matter - what benefit would I get exactly?
That's a pack of 3 high end mesh APs though, about $550 per. Each AP has 2 10G and 2 2.5G ports as well as 2 separate 4x4 6 GHz radios so you can backhaul and transmit at the same time. Little of that price has to do with Wi-Fi 7.
If you look at the price of 1x normal type AP instead of 3x BMWs the price really isn't that high. The story is the same on the client side where most any m.2 adapter should be less than $40 to upgrade to.
Anyone who lives in a dense area and held out on Wi-Fi 6E should definitely look into Wi-Fi 7 this year. The 6 GHz spectrum is a fantastic addition to Wi-Fi performance (not just throughput) and Wi-Fi 7 adds a few other tricks too.
My Wi-Fi has already been working just fine for a long, long time, new developments there are irrelevant to approximately everybody. Recent developments in AI, not so much.
As someone with professional reasons to be interested in Wi-Fi 7, it's been a really weird ride. At home I'm still leaning on a consumer 802.11ac (sorry, "Wi-Fi 5") router that I bought in late 2016. I'm very much itching to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
The big sign I've been waiting for is solid availability of commercial/enterprise Wi-Fi 7 access points, because I assume that the customer base for that product category demands a baseline of maturity/stability that I wish applied to consumer-grade products. But it's been frustrating.
The norm that I've seen thus far has been for every goddamned AP vendor on the planet to put up a painfully condescending "What is Wi-Fi 7?" page (with an obligatory "cars driving on a wider highway" analogy, never mind that 320 MHz was introduced with Wi-Fi 6E) and paper-launch an AP product. I gather that Ubiquiti is shipping (or at least about to ship) a surprisingly midrange product for this early in a new tech generation, and Zyxel has a higher-end one that can currently only be bought from what looks like a scalper for about $250 over the intended MSRP.
At some level, I was already sold on Wi-Fi 7 a year ago. I just wish someone could actually fucking deliver it as something other than a $1500 consumer mesh bundle.
IME 5G and 5GHz is fast in perfect location and crap outside the blessed areas. I blame it on higher frequencies attenuation. Does Wifi 7 buck the trend?
76 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 133 ms ] threadhttps://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...
I prefer real WiFi.
I use the previous generation RTL8852A in my homegrown wifi router, and it works nicely as AP with the same driver and hostapd. The modules are small, and fit to laptops. (the ones I buy are actually some stock for laptops, that gets re-sold as spare parts I think)
Cheaper than the Qualcomm wifi chips, too.
Internet is full of bad experiences, but mostly from windows laptop users and from 2-3 years ago, around the time the driver was being upstreamed to Linux. It has been solid and growing in features ever since. Throughtput is pretty nice 500mbit/s for a single 80MHz channel setup I'm using and stable.
There's no other choice for actively manufacturer supported wifi device usable for AP for Linux anyway. Broadcom drivers are unsupported for years, and firmware heavy with lack of firmware updates from manufacturer. Bad combo. Intel is not for APs. And that's about it.
just because everyone convinced you too use uefi as your true base OS doesn't mean it's not a driver issue. no matter how much you try to cover your own eyes.
same with cpu and microcode.
> it's always driver support.
Not necessarily, if it's an Intel module it might be a CNVi module instead of normal PCIe module, meaning it can only work on Intel platforms (because half of the WiFi hardware is actually within the CPU/chipset; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNVi for more information).
plain old crappy software (driver) which you are not supposed to have access (despite all the filling being likely based on gpl)
Laptops, largely, have become SoC's; at least for the most popular lines of business laptops (and I include Macbooks in that).
Things like the Thinkpad X1 Carbon and Surface's (incl. surface book) etc;
Both laptops (sans Apple) and desktop PCs (even USFFs) tend to use the NGFF M2.2230 form factor cards, typically with two antenna connectors.
Yes, even your super fancy high-end desktop PC motherboard ultimately has an NGFF M2.2230 WiFi and BlueTooth combo card plugged in somewhere. It might be ultimately buried under a large VRM or other heatsink, but it's there nonetheless. Granted, replacing these sometimes necessitates entirely removing the motherboard from the case.
Note for desktop PCs that you'll likely hook up an actual antennas to the RP-SMA connectors on the rear IO panel. Especially so if you're looking to take advantage of 6GHz spectrum. These antennas are a far less popular include with motherboards (even high end ones) than years ago, but they're generally only about $15-20 to purchase if you need better signal and range.
The Intel AX210 is the most recent one I've used, but I assume they'll release a WiFi 7 version.
M.2 is just PCI-E at the end of the day, so should be entirely viable to adapt one if something didn't have an M.2 A-key slot.
You can often find these mini m2 board to full size pci-e adapter cards or find these adapters pre-mounted on a board for sale.
MediaTek has been doing wifi 7 PCIe chips for a bit, but it seems like they're only really available on AMD motherboards so far. :(
Reports from Intel side are that maybe they've started doing something fishy or some-such with their m.2 cards? Folks on non-Intel can't seem to use them.
The lag here is alas, in my view all too typical. I'd really love for USB & m.2 cards to be out much faster, to speed adoption, but it feels like the industry always slow walks this shit out.
- No mention of the benefits of Wi-Fi 7
- No explanation of why AI headlines overshadowed Wi-Fi 7.. one is taking steps for changing what "work" looks like for Humanity while the other is..?
- Bunch of links in the small article pointing to articles which are either promoted or have affiliate links
I guess that last bullet explains it.
> One of the biggest benefits of Wi-Fi 7 is that it allows for one device to connect to your router on multiple bands — a feature called Multi-Link Operation — which gives your laptop options when it comes to where to funnel its packets. That means that when your 5GHz band is at capacity, it’ll just send the data down the 6GHz pipe, and vice versa. The result should be lower latency when you’re on a busy network, which is critical when you’re not able to wire up with ethernet.
It also lists the biggest benefit for gamers (It's posted in the "gaming" section of Verge) in the second paragraph.
You are exaggerating a bit.
Take these quotes from just one paragraph:
"now is a fine time to start looking at Wi-Fi 7 routers."
"There weren’t a lot announced at the show.... "
"You will probably want to be cautious about pulling the trigger, though."
"The choices are still a little slim and mostly still expensive."
This basically contradicts the title as well as the first line of the paragraph. How is that supposed to be useful for me?
If instead, the article were something along the lines of "Wi-Fi 7 just came out, but don't buy yet", then that might be different. The author is trying to put a happy tone on a negative article. Whether that's the editors or the write, I don't know, but the output is a waste of time for people who read the headline thinking wi-fi 7 has taken off.
Author wanted to fit in the term AI in there. Drives traffic. Has electrolytes - it's got what the NPC crave.
Interview with X CEO (Comments disabled)
Their transportation editor Andrew J. Hawkins:
```
Waymo’s driverless cars are finally ready for the highway
VW’s software division and Bosch are testing robot parking and EV charging
Hyundai says hydrogen will play a ‘prominent role’ in going carbon neutral
Kia’s ‘Platform Beyond Vehicles’ is a family of modular electric minivans for businesses
Lamborghini will measure your heart rate as you burn rubber around the track
Meet the new Tesla Autopilot, same as the old Tesla Autopilot.
Tesla is recalling another 1.6 million vehicles in China.
Tesla’s Autopilot fix ‘doesn’t go far enough.
```
I wonder which companies buy advertising on The Verge? It's crazy their anti-tesla bias.
For me it'll be at least a year before wifi 7 matters (probably longer because I'm lazy, cheap, and perfectly happy with wifi 6 currently).
As such, I upgraded to wifi6 less than 18months ago, I don't think there's a meaningful reason to assume it will be soon for me to upgrade again.
If you want MU-MIMO (so 4x4 or more), I'd expect the U7-Enterprise later this year.
For now i will stick with UniFi, or possibly pfSense.
Probably longer for me. WiFi currently meets my needs just fine, so there is no reason to toss out perfectly good equipment to upgrade. When my current APs break and I need to replace them, they'll have whatever standards happen to be on the market at the time.
> I have 2GB fiber
Your usecase/situation is totally legitimate and valid, but I assure you it is not shared by 90% of the population.
If they have wifi at home they're using Comcrap (and the like) equipment that was set up for them. They have zero clue how all that works. And honestly, why should they? Most people really don't need to know. They just need it to work if they're paying for it.
Electric light? No thank you - I have all these candles already.
Progress doesn't stop because we think a problem is solved.
This is not "cars versus horses", this is "fast cars versus slightly less fast cars".
Most people don't need sports cars if they already have regular cars
Most people don't need smart lights if they have regular lights.
Its progress, that doesn't mean we all need to buy it right now.
https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Deco-BE95-AI-Roaming-3-Pack/d...
If you look at the price of 1x normal type AP instead of 3x BMWs the price really isn't that high. The story is the same on the client side where most any m.2 adapter should be less than $40 to upgrade to.
The big sign I've been waiting for is solid availability of commercial/enterprise Wi-Fi 7 access points, because I assume that the customer base for that product category demands a baseline of maturity/stability that I wish applied to consumer-grade products. But it's been frustrating.
The norm that I've seen thus far has been for every goddamned AP vendor on the planet to put up a painfully condescending "What is Wi-Fi 7?" page (with an obligatory "cars driving on a wider highway" analogy, never mind that 320 MHz was introduced with Wi-Fi 6E) and paper-launch an AP product. I gather that Ubiquiti is shipping (or at least about to ship) a surprisingly midrange product for this early in a new tech generation, and Zyxel has a higher-end one that can currently only be bought from what looks like a scalper for about $250 over the intended MSRP.
At some level, I was already sold on Wi-Fi 7 a year ago. I just wish someone could actually fucking deliver it as something other than a $1500 consumer mesh bundle.