USB-WiFi

For Wifi, things with the ath9k was the gold standard for a while, though then Qualcomm bought Atheros, but supposedly the followup ath10k/11k/12k drivers are decent too. Mediatek MT76xx/79xx (mt76 driver) are also considered very good. See https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/USB_WiFi... (yes this is specifically about USB adapters, but usually the same driver is used for built-in WIFI in access points as well) https://wireless.docs.kernel.org/en/latest/en/users/drivers....

Just a note that if you're _serious_ about WiFi on the Raspberry Pi... you should use an external WiFi adapter—either PCIe or USB. (Mentioned in the article, but in general, the WiFi chips built into SBCs of all varieties... aren't great.) With the Compute Module 4, I've successfully tested a variety of adapters [1], from WiFi 6E to older mini PCIe and M.2 cards. There's even a board made for the purpose of multi-WiFi testing, the Seaberry [2]. The Raspberry Pi 5 works with all the PCIe WiFi chips I've tested (haven't had time to summarize testing on pipci database site yet), including a mt7921u-based WiFi 6E USB adapter (haven't written that up, but check out [3]). [1] https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/#network-cards-nics-and-wifi-... [2] https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/boards_cm/seaberry.html [3] https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/issues/

Yes, see https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/ for an overview. Despite being hosted on GitHub and having an issue tracker, it is a documentation-only project, not software.

It's been half a decade since I tried but I'm excited to some day again try various USB wifi chipsets. I kept having promising starts but either there would be a max client limit or the driver would start spewing errors/slowing down over time or something would happen, to push whatever new chipsets I was trying into unusability. The faq mentions the very excellent Linux wifi resource, https://docs.raspap.com/faq/#where-can-i-find-a-list-of-usb-... https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/USB_WiFi... MediaTek had been the only thing modern & well supported upstream but Realtek just five days ago got the heavy check! It's such a pure noble & great premise, that we can easily add AP mode to the world of devices, expensive or cheap. I'd way rather have like 6 medium speed AP's in my house than 1-2 very high speed big AP's. And AP c

If you are using Linux-based infrastructure, this list contains some recommended Wifi chipsets. https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/The_Shor... In particular, ALFA AWUS036ACHM has a combination of long range and low cost (~$39 USD). Ubiquity UAP AC LR also has long-range access points with up to 183 meters range for ~$109 USD: https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-ac-lr If you are more ambitious, you can deploy an OpenWRT BATMAN-based mesh network: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/mesh/batman I recommend using something that supports OpenWRT out of the box, such as GL-iNet Mango Mini Router GL-MT300N-V2 (~$20 USD refurbished) https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-mt300n_v2 https://store.gl-inet.com/products/certified-refurbished-pro... Please only use this information for humanitarian/civilian purposes and not f

One of the previously recommended ANDDEAR MT7612U adapters do not work on usb3 port 1. For MT7612U, get any other adapter but NOT this one. I don't know why this is a problem but it is. https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/issues/75 Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me will be able to provide some insight.

When you want to buy an usb wifi dongle and use, you should always check this awesome guide first[0]. It's up to date, the buying guide is sensible and this repo always has drivers not yet in mainline. [0] https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi

The only issues were needing to disable secure boot (which is usually a required step on laptops preinstalled with Windows anyways), and using a recent Linux kernel that has the required WiFi driver. Which the tutorial linked in the post mentions. And then Linux in general is notorious for having issues with USB WiFi adapters. More info on that can be found here https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi