athn(4) Dual Band support in Client mode

[shep]

UnDeadly 11n mode.

The linked article says "full" support but I cannot find it clearly stated that dual band modes are presently supported. Anyone using a dual band card at 300mbps?

[jggimi]

Consider sending Stephan <stsp@> an Email if you don't get a response here. This is a relatively small community of active users.

[shep]

In follow-up; I did email stephen but did not get a direct answer. In part it may have been my description of the question.

My understanding is that the difference between n150, n300 in the 2gHZ range is the number of antennas and mimo streams supported. The mimo capabilites are listed as TxR:S in the athn(4) man page. I believe each stream is 150Mbps and 2 streams can theoretically provide 300Mbps.

Devices are marketed as n150, n300 and some of the supported chipsets are listed as n300

Stephan did say that the best supported chip for pcie is AR9280 but in the US. these are hard to get - essentially used Dell or HP cards off eBay.

Edit: Not in the wikidevi database but found at Newegg was this AR9280


The following site has an excellent summary:
https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Atheros

The AR9281 is more readily available but the TxR:S is 1x2:2 = 150Mbps up and 300Mbps down. The same card EDUP EP-9601 had prices ranging from $16 to $40. On Amazon, when bundled into a >$25 purchase, it could be had for $9.

The last n300 pcie chipset is dual chip AR9285+[BT] AR3011 that is found in TP-Link TL-WN881ND. This chipset has a minor OpenBSD flaw, seen in other OS's (Linux/Windows/Mac), in that is not recognized on a warm boot - cold boots are fine.

The single chip AR9285 is 1x1:1 (n150) and is also readily available as the TP-Link TL-WN781NDv1. Not sure if this has the same issue with reboots.