mwlwifi VS USB-WiFi

Looks like you're referring to https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/issues/389

This kind of sums it up https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/issues/353

It's not openwrt fucking things up mate it.s the wifi drivers for your router they are shit and will never be fixt. Sorry. The drivers are called mwlwifi. YOu can read more about them here: https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/commits/master

The WRT1200AC family is not well supported. The Ethernet part should work fine, but the Wifi is unsupported since some years now, see here the repository: https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi The vendors are not interested in this hardware any more, but they have very good marketing and sales. Linksys and Marvell also did not really support the OpenWrt community, they just had good marketing. If your WRT1200AC device does not work well with OpenWrt do not complain to OpenWrt, but complain to the Linksys support.

The WRT1200AC family for example does not support WPA3, because the closed source Wifi firmware does not support it. The 15 years old WRT54G supports WPA3, it is just very slow. ;-)

Currently I would suggest the Linksys E8450 / Belkin RT3200 (same hardware) or some other device using the current Mediatek platform with MT7622 + MT7915 + MT7531. (2 X Cortex-A53, Wifi 6) All chips are supported in recent upstream Linux kernel, including Wifi. The Mediatek router team is currently doing pretty good upstream open source work for their chips.

Well, not exactly known, but the "WRT3200ACM + WPA3" combination is known to be bad for other reasons. See https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/issues/389

I'd like to express general caution with upgrading to 21.02 on Linksys WRT-series routers; the Marvell "open-source" firmware isn't truly open source (it has proprietary binary blobs) and development seems to have halted sometime in 2020.

Many users report Wi-Fi connectivity issues[0].

[0] https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/issues

https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/issues/391#issuecomment-770244761

Nope. At one point Marvell promised to write firmware that supports 802.11s, but they backed out -- c.f. https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/issues/127.

Maybe they are not "bad" for what they are, but they are certainly full of bugs https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/issues and most importantly development has been dead for years https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/commits/master . So if you got one and it works as is (maybe depends on region or luck?) fine I guess, just don't ever expect new features or improvements to that. For someone buying new for OpenWRT I wouldn't recommend getting a dead-end device.

I've already had a look at this but unsure how often it's updated, 6 months ago according to github: https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/The_Short_List.md

Just google "raspberry pi wifi adapter" or see https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi

Just a note that if you're _serious_ about WiFi on the Raspberry Pi... you should use an external WiFi adapter—either PCIe or USB.

With the Compute Module 4, I've successfully tested a variety of adapters [1], from WiFi 6E to older mini PCIe and M.2 cards. There's even a board made for the purpose of multi-WiFi testing, the Seaberry [2].

The Raspberry Pi 5 works with all the PCIe WiFi chips I've tested (haven't had time to summarize testing on pipci database site yet, including a mt7921u-based WiFi 6E USB adapter (haven't written that up, but check out [3]).

[1] https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/#network-cards-nics-and-wifi-...

[2] https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/boards_cm/seaberry.html

[3] https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/issues/137#issuecomment...

Hey all, I've read the Github list of Linux WiFi adapters (https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/The_Short_List.md) but I've seen sporadic comments of certain users saying some haven't worked for them. I'm a bit risk averse buying something most likely from the USA and waiting a while for it to get to Australia and it not work, so I was hoping some people could comment with their specific models that have worked for them.

It would. These should work, as clients and in AP mode. https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi