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by mkopec 1158 days ago
I have a PC Engines apu2 board (x86 based) with a Mediatek Wi-Fi 6 card, running OpenWRT. Can do gigabit over Wi-Fi with PPPoE based WAN. If I had to get another AP it would probably be another apu2, too bad these are outrageously expensive now.

(should probably disclose that I am one of the devs that maintained the apu2 coreboot boot firmware)

My problem with APs running proprietary FW is that I don't trust them to be secure, even if the vendor does updates, you never know what they're doing in the background. E.g. some APs have a hidden secondary SSID for their proprietary mesh implementation. With OpenWRT I can set them up exactly the way I want to, using open standards (mesh, roaming) instead of vendor-specific crap.
1 comments
aojdwhsd 1155 days ago
Interesting, which Mediatek card are you using? I'm thinking about doing the same thing.
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mkopec 1155 days ago
I've got this one from AsiaRF: https://www.asiarf.com/shop/wifi-wlan/wifi_mini_pcie/wifi6-4... . OpenWRT has drivers for it in the repository, so it's pretty simple to set up.

I'm happy with it, but I did have to get a heatsink for it, since otherwise it overheats easily. Since I got it they released a couple of dual-band dual-concurrent cards like this one: https://www.asiarf.com/shop/wifi-wlan/wifi_mini_pcie/wifi6e-... , which is pretty neat, since you don't need to get a separate card for 2.4GHz devices.

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aojdwhsd 1155 days ago
Thanks. There's a message on the page of the newer card "Main board Power Supply design please provide 3.3V 3.5A, minimum 3.3V 3A" - do you think this would be a problem for an APU2?

One more thing - how is the signal range for you?

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mkopec 1155 days ago
I imagine with a sufficient power supply it should not be a problem, at least I haven't had any problem with mine yet. I have a friend who's using one of their DBDC cards in an apu2 and he also hasn't had power issues yet.

> One more thing - how is the signal range for you?

With four 5dBi antennas it's sufficient to have >800mbps in every corner of my single bedroom apartment. Other than that I have no means to test, sorry :)

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