X86 client and AP

Hello all. I am trying to setup opwnwrt to connect to a open wifi and then broadcast my own secured ssid. I have it running on a proxmox vm on a qotom mini pc. I have an minipci Atheros AR9462 passthrough to it and I can get it working in either client or AP mode but it doesn't seem like both. Does the AR9462 support this? I've been trying to find some info on it but cant seem to. I think this configuration is a client repeater mode?

x86 as an AP is generally not going to have very good performance... but your approach of creating a wifi STA + AP mode system within a VM is going to prove quite difficult if not impossible.

Off hand, I'm not sure if the wifi chipset supports simultaneous AP + STA modes. But your best bet in trying it is to run on bare metal. You can do this by booting a USB stick with OpenWrt.

Meanwhile, why not use a regular all-in-one wifi router device for this purpose. They are much better suited for the job and many have proper support for simultaneous AP+STA.

I wanted to kind of see if I could have a bit of an all-in-one travel kind of device. I've got some other things running on the mini pc in proxmox, a NAS vm, pi-hole and jellyfin. I was running it just as an AP connecting via ethernet and it seemed fine there as far as AP. I wanted to see if I could get it working with just the AR9462 card as wireless client and AP as not every place/hotel may have ethernet available. I could definitely setup a wifi router as a AP + STA, had done that a ways back with an old wrt54g but would need another device for the other stuff.

How about a small travel router. They're inexpensive, small, and can be powered by USB/batteries.

https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-ar300m

$32.00 @ Amazon upgrades to 23.05.0, runs on a battery pack and uses WPA3.

I was able to get it working, I think before it wasn't connecting as a client to the host wifi and therefore not broadcasting its own wifi. I've seen this before with openwrt I think its a limitation of the hardware though not necessarily software but I could be wrong, or a combination of both. It can lock you out of the webui too I found. I used to hasve a TP-Link MR3040 running openwrt. It was a nice little travel router while it lasted but can't run much anymore. It had that problem to where it wouldn't broadcast its ssid if not connected on the client side, ended up locking myself out of the device since I had the ethernet on WAN at the time. Had to do a hard reset then.

Yes when a STA is configured, the STA must connect to its AP before any other interfaces on the same radio can be brought up. This is because the STA will be scanning through all channels looking for the AP to connect to, and an AP that rapidly changes channels is not usable anyway.

There is a package called travelmate that helps with this. It will scan once for the AP expected by a configured STA, and if it is not found it will disable the STA so the driver stops changing channels and the radio can be used to transmit an AP. The scan and disable check will be repeated until the AP is found in range.

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