hmm.

Been struggling with a question I want to ask on the site - it feels super broad...

I'm currently slightly obsessed over wireless, (as you all know, I tend to dabble in various things). For some bizzare reason 802.11ax adaptors are rediculously cheap but the APs are fairly expensive. I get intel probably's building a ton of the former and they're easy to integrate, but wondering what actually makes an AP better.

I'd assume better antenna, but my DIY router has external ones and sucks compared to even my crappy ISP supplied dlink. We can rule out processor power...

Radios? I noticed in wikidevi a few routers have signal amplifiers?

Drat that died

hmmmmmm good question

i guess AP's have chipsets designed for recieving multiple inputs? maybe?

tho unlikely thinking about it

ya, I looked it up. The 5ghz chipset on that specific model is the same as one you can get for a laptop

It feels broad

so I kinda tried to narrow it down to "Chipsets" "Antennae" and "amplifiers"

and 2 of 3 are things I can easily swap around without getting local telecom authorities involved

What is the functional difference between a wireless card and a wireless AP, concidering they use the same chipset?

I can think of a few things, might still be too broad tho

well -ethernet is a whole different matter

but this is pretty much "crappy range"

I guess, if i saw your question, I'd ask "What are you trying to solve - what is the issue you face?"

and unless I got an AP with n removable antennae with the same connector, and a DIY unit with the same, antennae is hard to test

power is "obvious"

I'm trying to build a 802.11ax ap that dosen't cost 300 dollars and dosen't suck :D

hmmmm

is ax even standaised yet :O

I've built an 802.11N one that sucks

it has

just uncommon and wierd

the actual adaptors are cheap - ~10 dollars though I think I spent about 20usd for ones with PCIe brackets.

I know lots of the linux drivers, have power modification bits, but with various warnings about it being illegal in various provinces....

also a lot of the time, the modifications aren't accessible without directly editing the driver.

Oh, yeah, turning it up to 11. Not actually as efficient as you would expect

well yup, square inverse law

DAMN U UNIVERSE

And noise

ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/189347/…

I have a pair of these on order

going to do a bit of quick testing for speed using my old desktop and new desktop

(I need wifi for dumb reasons on my new desktop anyway....)

Also

it was so. damned. tempting to make

Why do DIY routers suck, and what is big networking hiding from me?

the title

actually my current setup is fine, other than that I need to reset all my mesh nodes and take them off the broken cloud management system at some point

they worked fine locally

At the moment, my planned apartment is tiny enough that I could probably get away with crappy wifi, especially since they supposedly have ethernet built in to all the rooms

@JourneymanGeek hmm

when i built my gentoo router, I could max out the b/g

oh, my ubuntu one is a beast.

2.0 is probably going to be even better ;)

I've not built anything newer.

oh, software mainly

It wasn't hugely fast at switching, 80Mbit/s instead of 100 but meh

ah, I have a quartet of gigabit ports

but never really tried it for switching, they just go to different network segments

but I get what you mean, ,it's like there's some magic switch that makes the chipset work 'better' than just putting it in AP mode

actually if I built another iteration 2 ports might be enough

for switching, there's actually fairly clear reasons, like hardware offload

and consumer routers NEED that cause their processors are kinda... garbage

yup

on the other hand

in theory I can bond connections

If I went for a mini ITX base over an industrial PC base, I could also, say go for 2.5 Gbit or 10Gbit links on the same software platform too

and of course long term support and guarenteed software updates in near perpetuity... ;p

though my dream setup is a DIY mesh

the software is sorta there

prplmesh would let me build my own nodes (though the perfect hardware is still tricky)

(or heck, if performance/range is a non issue, just build em on rpis or similar)

I do have a router built atop an orange pi r2 ;p

On the other hand, the industrial PC literally looks like someone forged a router in the bowels of mordor.

Its a very tanky looking thing

hm, forum.openwrt.org/t/kernel-replacement-for-ax200/40915

seems an interesting data point too

1

devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20191030-00/?p=103036

Ever got a "G" when shutting down? Well, this is why.

@Bob twitter.com/danrkports/status/1198042657504690176

From this

I came across this monstrocity

jcat.eu/product/m12-switch-gold

Euro 4k

And... you can't even plug in a normal ethernet cable into it

.... lets move this to matrix

:O

i gained liuke 100 some how

WHAT AL#BUM has 100 tracks???

1

@djsmiley2k-CoW Now That's What I Call "Now That's What I Call Music", a "Now That's What I Call Music" Music Compilation ?

lol maaaybe :O

@djsmiley2k-CoW aaa

And the christmas tree is up

how dd this occur

@djsmiley2k-CoW It's still November!

mutters should be illegal

mumble, mumble

/me glares at wife

@djsmiley2k-CoW /me glares at local council :)

o_O

oh right, yeah, the lights in the city centre are up

not that I've been there in... ~3 months