Hello!
I am wondering if the Wi-Fi adapter with the Atheros AR9271 chip is supported in the latest version of OpenWRT (23.05.5 (r24106-10cc5fcd00)) for Raspberry Pi 4B, 400, or CM4 (64-bit).
Any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated!
It's functional, but it would be madness to buy it in 2025.
Can you please tell me why you think that way? And do you have any suggestions for the best adapters for OpenWRT that will provide both signal and power stability at a high level? Thank you very much for your help!
because it's old as f-ck.
There is very little RAM available inside the 9271 chip, which limits what the firmware and driver can do. I think that only a few stations can be connected in AP mode.
It is however good for monitor mode. It is one of the few radios that correctly reports the MCS of a received packet in the metadata header.
I have used ar9170 and ar9271 in AP mode around a decade ago. Yes it technically 'worked', but stability was 'not good(TM)', with stalls left and right - and that was just servicing 1 (rarely 2) wireless clients with very casual/ minimal usage. On top of that, mk24 is right about the minimal on-device RAM, which severely limits what the device can do (iirc 8 connected clients is a hard limit due to that, but you're already in trouble with fewer than 6).
Apart from all this, it's 2025 and we have 802.11ax/ wifi6 (with massive improvements even on 2.4 GHz), but ar9271 is a 14½ year old 802.11n/ wifi4 chipset...
If you are looking for a sensible solution, USB (too small for Mu-MIMO and beamforming to work (antennas too close to each other, too small), not AP-centric, tendency to overheat, USB related issues (with little on-device RAM as a consequence) is not one. A cheap plastic AP would be (e.g. mt7921a+mt7915DBDC) or a decent AP-centric PCI(e) card, if you have to.