802.11be QCA cards eg WLE7002E25, anyone?

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hello,

I've been waiting for an MTK option for a single miniPCIe slot to step up from my MT7915, there still are none. What about QCA-based cards, following reference design from my understanding?

I'd prefer a 5G6G or 6G, but can only grab a 2.4G+5G DBDC option on the cheap. Are there any obvious red flags like poor/no driver support in OpenWRT, or firmware schenanigans like with previous generation of QCA cards? Anyone using one of these in the wild?

2

It iis out for some while now.

The other thing you wish for is not supported in mainline.
https://wireless.docs.kernel.org/en/latest/en/users/drivers/ath12k.html

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3

@brada4 thank you!

The link you provided is for a 802.11ax card, whereas I need/want 802.11be.

AFAIR ath12k is available in snapshots, and other cards (client ones) using it are working fine. No word on AP ones like the one I am interested though...

4

Only industrial kind of that card is supported.
MBO is not really instrumented yet.

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5

@brada4 thank you!

I'll wait for MTK 802.11be AP and/or improvement of QCA 802.11be support, then!

6

Be aware that you're pretty much among the first to experiment with 802.11be cards, especially addon cards and ath12k. That means there is not much general wisdom present, yet - and ath10k/ ath11k/ ath12k are rather special in many ways (and, while needed to get reasonably recent drivers, the backports approach doesn't make that any easier (mailbox/ rpc API between kernel and backports)). Another hot topic for both mt76 and ath12k (but ath12k in particular) is finding a card from a reputable vendor, who programmed the EFUSEs correctly! You are in a world of pain if those aren't correct, which is often the case for these low-volume/ almost prototype cards.

Reconsider if you really want to go there, yet. And count on failure and potentially having to go through multiple cards/ sellers to succeed.

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7

@slh thank you!

Possible vendor misconfiguration is the main reason I steered cleared of QCA AP cards so far. The only reason I consider them now is a very good price offered by a couple vendors. I'd rather wait for MTK with adequate driver support and no (major) headaches, then.

8

Btw., a 5+6 GHz DBDC card is not that likely to find. Mostly for two reasons:

  • the bands are too close to each other, so you have to fight more with interference from the other band of your same card.
  • in most cases, 5- and 6- GHz is more or less treated as different portions of (basically) the same band - and with that, the same/ similar phy and band filters. As a result it's easy to find 2.4+5 GHz or 2.4+6 GHz DBDC cards, but the combination of 5+6 GHz is technically much more difficult - I guess (in the future, quite a few months++[*]) it's more likely to find 2.4+5+6 GHz 'TBTC' cards, than 5+6 GHz DBDC ones.

--
[*] when considering the potential time scale, you have to remember that DBDC/ 'TBDC' is usually a way to cheap down boards, but 6 GHz is still considered a premium feature - which is not served well, if you cut your 4x4 card into 3 virtual 1x1+1x1+2x2 cards and the corresponding reductions in MIMO/ beam-forming and throughput reductions. 6 GHz effectively still means high-end, and high-end kind of implies 4x4 (or better) for each band, all bands.

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9

@slh thank you!

I mentioned 5G6G because Compex makes one.

My goal is to get as close as possible to saturating 2.5GBps link for LAN to WLAN traffic for a 2x2 802.11be client, Anything that can do 2x2 320Mhz 6G 802.11be is fine, be it 2x2 5G6G DBDC, 4x4 6G or something else - but I wouldn't mind getting a 2x2 160Mhz 802.11be at 5G on the cheap as an intermediary step, if that's my only (reasonably priced) option for now.

I considered getting BPI-R4 with native 802.11be TBTC card - but it's physically too big and somewhat expensive, packed with features I do not need. Would prefer a physically smaller and cheaper solution.

10

2882Mbps does not saturate 2500in 2500out both at once. Means cannot achieve target.