Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 20:21:05 +0800 From: Adrian Chadd <adrian@freebsd.org> To: Lev Serebryakov <lev@serebryakov.spb.ru> Cc: freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Ubiquiti SR71-E (ar9280) support? Or, maybe, other Mini-PCIe high-power WiFi card? Message-ID: <BANLkTikDcpNhK%2Buk6HgeN8zPvapfuh0L9Q@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <1813166089.20110516155219@serebryakov.spb.ru> References: <1813166089.20110516155219@serebryakov.spb.ru>
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2011/5/16 Lev Serebryakov <lev@serebryakov.spb.ru>: > =A0It seems, that only Mini-PCIe card with high output power (more than > =A0standard 100mW) is Ubiquiti SR71-E with Atheros 9280 chipset. > > =A0As it is 802.11n with 2x2 MIMO, and there is no official support for > =A0802.11n in FreeBSD, I have several questions: > > =A0(1) Will it work as 802.11g in 8-STABLE? > =A0(2) As far as I can see, 802.11n is semi-supported in HEAD. Will it > =A0be ready in 9.0-RELEASE? Will it be backported to 8-STABLE branch? I've not tried that particular card. But there's AR9280 support in -HEAD and it seems to work fine for me with the testing I've done. If someone buys me one then I'll do some further hard testing. :) Now: * There's no guarantee it'll work stable in 8-STABLE. And if it does it may end up damaging your card - I added a lot of TX power calibration code to the ath codebase specifically for the AR9280 and later chips. * I've no plans to backport my ath work to -8. But you can compile up the -HEAD ath driver and PCI glue under -8 as modules. I suggest you do that. * 802.11n ath support won't be ready by 9.0-RELEASE as I've got university studies to focus on. * I've no plans to backport the net80211 related 802.11n changes to 8-STABLE. I don't know if Bernhard does. I'd rather see users upgrade to 9.0-RELEASE and use that so we're not trying to fix bugs in 8-STABLE, 9-STABLE and HEAD. If someone wants to step up and take care of that then great. :) But then they're responsible for it! > =A0And almost unrelated question: am I right, that Ubiquiti SR71-E is > =A0now only card, which is more powerful than standard ones and has > =A0Mini-PCIe connection? There were a lot of high-power (up to 1000mW) > =A0cards with Mini-PCI, but I can not find anything for Mini-PCIe. I've no idea what the implications are for power usage on Mini-PCIe cards. Ubiquiti have stopped selling the SR71-E cards and I'm not sure why; and I'm not sure whether there are other cards out there that are Mini-PCIe and high powered. You may want to contact Ubiquiti and ask. I've read a few notes about the 3-stream, 3-radio AR9300 and AR9400 stuff exceeding the Mini-PCIe power limits and thus some adaptive power saving things have to be put in place to support it. I'm not sure of the details (and I've no time to look into it, sorry.) Thanks and good luck! Adrian
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