Hi, I'm looking for some kind of wifi expansion card that works well under Linux to turn my Desktop PC into a wireless router if at all possible. I basically need to be able to set up a 2.4 ghz wifi that uses my PCs Ethernet connection to get internet access on connected devices. If any of you guys know good hardware for the job and maybe a good tutorial or some other reading material on how to set something like that up it'd be appreciated. The hardware doesn't really have to be awesome, I don't need a lot of range, I don't need to connect more than 3 devices anytime soon and I'll be happy if I get enough transfer rate to watch some 720p youtube on connected devices, so I'm hoping that I can get something like that on the cheap.
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Hi,
There's basically three steps to setting that up.
1. Install a WiFi card.
2. Somehow pipe your internet through the card.
3. Run a DHCP server on the computer.
There's a cool writeup on the Arch wiki:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/software_access_point
Atheros WiFi cards are typically well supported when you want to do strange things with WiFi because a lot of the functionality is in software. I think a card based in the AR9280 chipset would work for you. Intel cards typically do more in hardware, meaning that you can't muck with the functionality as much :)
Also, the Raspberry Pi 3 can do this with its built-in WiFi. I haven't used it for more than 1 client at a time so you would need to verify that first, though.
http://elinux.org/RPI-Wireless-Hotspot
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Just for posterity, in the end I decided to get a USB Wifi Adpater instead because I plan on replacing my desktop with an SFF mITX build soon and PCI/PCIe slots on that platform are obviously very limited.
http://www.linuxwireless.org/welcome/ was a very useful resource in finding suitable devices with good driver support in the kernel. In the end I got a TP-Link TL-WN722N. Was cheap as dirt, performs well and I had my access point going in less than a minute.
most devices supporting ac(i believe the standard is called) will do, atleast if you're running hostapd on linux, not sure how well window$ handles hosting a AP sorry.
720p requires little bandwidth so mainly its about comfort on your home network e.g. transferring files and so on if you want large bandwidths.