A little bit of advice about the NIC driver

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

It is recommended that you indicate whether the NIC driver supports AP mode in the description of the NIC driver.
I noticed that some NICs support AP mode and some support Station mode, so I recommend that you make a note in the description so that can refer to it before buying a NIC.
For example, kmod-rtl8812au-ct supports Station mode, and kmod-rtw88 supports AP mode.

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2

Find your lsusb device id-s here since you dont trust posting them here

3

There are a couple of things to consider with this request:

  • 'someone' will have to gather this information
  • what does "supports AP mode" actually mean?
    • flag enabled (iw list)
    • or actually working (as in someone has actively tested is hardware and driver actually work)
    • long term stability
    • be aware that the results may (do vary) between chipsets (even if supported by a single driver) and firmware versions, as well as how your environment (noisy, type of clients trying to connect, hello esp8266 or Marvell WLAN)
    • even with 'good' drivers, there are quite considerable variations, things like
      • mt7613 not supporting DFS
      • mt7602/ mt7603 not being good in environments with lots of interference and cross-talk
      • mt7921 (or carl9170, or ath9k_htc, …) technically supporting AP (even 'well'), but being distinctively client-oriented chipsets, so the number of connecting clients is severely limited by the (chipset) hardware resources
    • orthogonal to AP support, there are also related topics that can vary widely between drivers/ chipsets (how well they cope with power-saving clients, if the powersaving features of thise chipset itself are implemented correctly, …)
  • especially if you think about USB devices, we have additional topics that are completely independent of the question of 'AP mode supported', but still have a major impact on its actual usability
    • thermal design (most USB WLAN cards have a tendency to overheat if used actively for prolonged amounts of time)
    • what's the antenna design (range, does Mu-MIMO or beam-forming have a chance to work - or are the antennas too close to each other, on the same polarisation pane, etc. pp.).

…it ain't easy.

One of the major reasons why it's not advisable to use USB WLAN cards for AP purposes at all. See previous discussions about USB WLAN and/ or retrofitting WLAN cards for AP purposes to x86_64 systems, which provide a lot more nuanced background explanations.

The sensible -practical- solution would be to offloading wireless features to a purpose-built 'plastic' AP running OpenWrt. even a 15 buck mt7621a+mt7916DBDC (repeater style) AP running OpenWrt will run circles over any USB WLAN card you could add (and most PCIe cards you're likely to envision).

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