I recently acquired a NUC 6i5SYH. It has Intel Wireless-AC 8260 and Intel Ethernet Connection I219-V. Would I be able to use it as an OpenWrt repeater? I would be using the Ethernet connection only for the initial configuration of WDS.
Intel wifi cards usually aren't capable of running in AP mode, or doesn't do it very well.
Thanks!
What if I added an rt73USB dongle that reportedly works in AP mode.
You don't want that either.
On the one hand, rt73usb is just 802.11g (not even 802.11n) - on the other hand the rt2x00 driver suite isn't exactly steller in terms of AP mode (the hardware can't deal with powersaving wifi clients either).
…and all the system inherent issues of USB wireless come in on top.
A dedicated concurrent dual-band AP comes in cheaper and will provide you with much better reliability any performance. The NUC can be a great wired router, but like the RPi, the wireless side cannot compete with a made-for-the-job plastic wireless router (you can't stick in two good mini-PCIe/ m.2 wireless cards capable of AP mode - and even if you could, buying those individually would be more expensive than the first decent APs).