Sounds like a well capable chipset.
Is any support available? Curious about the Openwrt x86 platform support
1 Like
starting kernel 5.16
2 Likes
Based on your reply and https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/targets/kernelversions#kernel_versions , some implementation should be present in next version of Openwrt?
Perhaps not the upcoming 23.05, but the one after.
23.05 is based on the 5.15 kernel - OpenWrt 23.05.0-rc1 first release candidate, and I'm not sure they going to bump it up to 5.16 before stable is out.
I expect 23.05 branch to stay on kernel 5.15 for its lifetime. 5.15 is scheduled to get LTS support until October 2026.
5.16 is not a kernel with LTS support. Support for kernel 5.16 already ended in April 2022.
The next LTS kernel following 5.15 is 6.1, that is already used in master branch.
If someone likes to backport support for newer hardware to 23.05, it could be done. But not by a bump to higher kernel versions that are already out of support.
1 Like
5.15 it is then, and we could assume the release after 23.05 would be 6.1, or newer.
1 Like
The relevant backports version of the wireless system in 23.05 is based on kernel v6.1 (and was at v5.15 in 22.03), mt76 is updated independently of that (and even newer).
However, mt7915/mt7916 are still a more capable chipset, especially for AP mode.
2 Likes
What's the best (emphasis on coverage) USB based chipset/adapter for AP in wifi 5 or wifi 6? And how good is it compared to default pcie based ones?
A(ny) non-USB based one.
Coverage depends more on how the manufacturer designed the rf frontend, than the WLAN chipset behind it.
2 Likes
I was curious is there a USB based AP device (wifi 5 / 6) similar to PCIe based ones for running Openwrt on Proxmox? If there is one, how different would it be in terms of quality of the connection?
I have experience with two USB chipsets, the MT7610u and MT7662u.
The MT7610 is WiFi 5 1x1, and usually comes in tiny little dongles. Performance is low, but coverage is surprisingly good for a 1x1 device. I have it plugged in to a BPI-R3 just to provide an extra 5GHz device to get TVs and other appliances off my high-speed network.
The other one I have experience with is the MT7662. This is a bit better device, 2x2 WiFi 5 with both good coverage and reasonable performance. But I don't know of any pre-fab dongles that have this chipset. All the devices I've seen with it are just the module board - it's intended for integration inside OEM devices. It could be made to work, of course, but would require some homebrew.
Both chipsets work in AP mode, though the 7610 has problems with DFS channels.
That's all I have personal experience with.
2 Likes
There's another snag…
PCIe can be passed through via IOMMU, USB devices can't really - the results is a slow half-emulation, which is slow and buggy, and something WLAN cards don't like at all, are lags and slow responses between driver and device.
tl;dr: apart from USB wireless being crap for this purpose to begin with, virtualized USB is even worse.
1 Like
Using container maybe the only way to make it having better performance.
I just purchased a COMFAST CF-953AX (MT7921AU) to play around, and this one has WiFi 6E! Not sure if I can make it work under 23.05RC.
There are drivers in 23.05RC and snapshot.
kmod-mt7921u - 5.15.117+2023-05-13-969b7b5e-1 - MediaTek MT7921U wireless driver
Running OpenWrt in a container is not a supported setup, it depends on being able to load- and unload (its own) kernel modules and relies on quite a few preconfigurations/ sysctl settings on the kernel side, not having those will introduce problems up to glaring security holes.
Not sure (because there's alot of detail I didn't fathom) but it looks like it requires kernel 5.18 or higher, unless OpenWrt has some backports for it?
Hi
I'm late to the chat but does anyone know of 4G USB Dongles that use the Mediatek MT7662u chipset that are in production now, I appreciate that back in June 2023, as stated above, there weren't any but are there any now?
Thanks
Chris
What if whole USB controller is passed thru to a VM as a PCIe device? As I get these are for software mostly in a form of a PCIe device, no matter embedded or add-on.
When you passthrough USB device, it's still an USB device to your guest VM, why would it becomes PCIe??? It's not emulation.