I have the Banana Pi R4 and it works great with OpenWrt. Sinnovoip offers the Wifi 7 Card but I think it's a bit pricy with over 100 bucks. Also I don't need Wifi 7 I'm happy when I get good Wifi 6 connectivity.
There is a mini PCI slot. What would you guys recommend me getting. Thank you so much.
Stand alone plastic box router as AP.
MT7925 would be good, but it’s not available as mpcie.
If you use an adapter it will not fit in the case.
Intel has wifi7 mpcie but is not recomended as AP.
MT7921 is a cheap wifi6 that has a model with mpcie connection:
This is not the mt7921u that has 6GHz
And remember that you can only use one radio - not both at the same time.
Is a client-oriented chipset, it's not good enough for AP mode (since 802.11ac, there are typically quite major differences, among others the number of connected clients and more).
As these cards aren't really plug'n'play (there are many pitfalls, from beyond-spec power requirements, cooling, connected lanes on the connector, compatibility, etc.), going with the vendor recommendations does make sense. Everything else is more a variation of plug'n'pray. And yes, I'm saying this well-aware and despite the documented issues with sinovoips WLAN cards, because the alternatives are even more of a risk.
1 Like
I would not have recommended it if I had not actually tried this combination myself and seen it work, but yes - I agree.
The vendor choice, using sinovoips wifi7 card is still the best choice here - by far.
ok, thank you. So wifi7 works with stock OpenWrt as well? I simply don’t know if they commit their patches upstream. Do they?
How is the R4 working as a router? I am thinking very hard about getting one given all the reported issues with the BE14 card. The plan is to then connect an access point to the R4 so that it can focus exclusively as a router.
Are there any issues with the R4 operating strictly as a router? Is it totally stable? Given the minimum of 4GB of RAM, I am also thinking of using lots of blocklists for a totally private and secure network with AdGuard Home.
I ran it for month without any issues. It’s a bit confusing with all the booting and flashing options but other than that I did a great job. I did also this review on the device with some benchmarks.
1 Like
Sorry for the late answer, but yes and compared with the wifi6 card above you can use all three radios at the same time and get access point focused functions like “mesh point” and more.
Oh??? Let me check, I bought the MT7925 with adapter already but didn’t have time to check on it.
Well I’m using a 3D printed plastic case so maybe I’ll need to print another one with more depth to fit in case it’s not fitting