Building an x86_64 WiFi router. need recommendations of Wlan card

Networking Networking Hardware
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i am looking to build a replacement for my router. i intend to build openWRT for this new machine.
however, this project is at an impasse: i cannot find anywhere where i can buy a 60GHz WLAN (80211ad) card to use.

i find laptop WLAN cards that seem to support it, but i am not building a laptop. i need something i can stick in a standard PCIe slot and use an an access point.

does anybody know of any card that fits my needs?

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TIL of 802.11ad…

If you can’t find an actual PCI-E card, I’d go with something like this:

https://www.ebay.com/c/1637738115

https://www.amazon.com/Zerone-Express-Wireless-Ethernet-Converter/dp/B07N2X62LQ/

plus more of those antenna adapters and suitable external antennas.

Mind you, I love hacking stuff together like this :smiley:

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i happen to have that exact same wlan card in my laptop. it does not seem to support 802.11ad AP mode. at least, i cant get it to work on debian 10.

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I was going to mention the adapter when I saw the original post, but then remembered how all of those 60GHz devices have weird beam forming antenna arrays. (like that mikrotik wireless wire thingie).

I’m not sure what else you’d need in terms of hardware other than the adapter.

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Yeah, you’d have to carefully choose the wireless card/chip itself. Doesn’t look like there’s many of them on the market.

There’s pre-assembled cards being sold on Amazon, huh: https://www.amazon.com/ASHATA-Network-Atheros-Wireless-802-11AD/dp/B07WC3PCQF/

AP mode is done by software, not sure why 11ad would not work?

Sounds like an interesting project, I wonder why do you want a full power computer as your router?

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i tried to avoid building my own router, but i cannot find any pre-built router that has 10G RJ45 ports, 60GHz Wlan, AND most importantly, is supported by openwrt.

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I sometimes think about doing something similar, but have it be a NAS+switch/router. But I don’t want a big desktop for it, so a custom case as small as possible would be nice. Maybe one day heh

Microtik has these: https://mikrotik.com/product/CCR1036-8G-2SplusEM , https://mikrotik.com/product/crs312_4c_8xg_rm (a more common MIPS CPU) and other models. But it won’t run OpenWRT :confused:

A custom router out of an x86/ARM system (better support for them) would be great. Please post updates if you do build it!